Masm macro processor in system software

Operating system microsoft windows and msdos type assembler license commercial proprietary software. As the assembler evaluates each line of your programs, it scans the source code for the name of an early defined macro, and then substitutes the macro definitions for the macro name. Twopass macro processor would not allow the body of one macro instruction to contain. The microsoft macro assembler masm is an assembler for the x86 family of microprocessors, originally produced microsoft msdos operating system. The macro names are entered into namtab, namtab contains two pointers to the beginning and the end of the definition in deftab. The third data structure is an argument table argtab, which is used during the expansion of macro invocations. Macro represents a group of commonly used statements in the source programming language. A macro is a symbolic name that you give to a series of characters called a text macro or give to one or more statements, called a macro procedure or function.

What is meant by positional parameters if the parameters and. Something you may not know about the macro in masm. The macro begins with the % macro directive and ends with the %endmacro directive. It uses intel syntax for the windows of microsoft and msdos. Overall saving in software development cost and a maintenance cost. In nasm, macros are defined with % macro and %endmacro directives. The macro processor reads the source statements and performs all of its functions, the output lines are passed to the language translator as they are generated the macro processor operates as a sort of input routine for the assembler or. For every occurrence of macro the whole macro body or macro block of. Unlike most masm reserved words, predefined symbols are casesensitive. Macro is that the section of code that the programmer writes defines once, and then can use or. It supported a wide variety of macro facilities and structured programming idioms, including highlevel constructions for looping, procedure calls and alternation therefore, masm is an example of a highlevel assembler. The body of the macro definition might contain a statement like. What is the difference between masm macro processor and the one for sic. It was initially produced for operating system microsoft msdos.

Jwasm jwasm is a free masmcompatible assembler with these features. Support for 64bit processors was not added until the release of visual studio. Microsoft macro assembler the microsoft macro assembler masm is an assembler for the x86 family of microprocessors, originally produced microsoft msdos operating system. It is easy to design a twopass macro processor pass 1. The microsoft macro assembler masm is an x86 assembler that uses the intel syntax for. Macros were used to customize large scale software systems for.