9.34.1 VAX Command-Line Options
The Vax version of as
accepts any of the following options,
gives a warning message that the option was ignored and proceeds.
These options are for compatibility with scripts designed for other
people's assemblers.
-D (Debug)
-S (Symbol Table)
-T (Token Trace)
- These are obsolete options used to debug old assemblers.
-d (Displacement size for JUMPs)
- This option expects a number following the -d. Like options
that expect filenames, the number may immediately follow the
-d (old standard) or constitute the whole of the command line
argument that follows -d (gnu standard).
-V (Virtualize Interpass Temporary File)
- Some other assemblers use a temporary file. This option
commanded them to keep the information in active memory rather
than in a disk file.
as
always does this, so this
option is redundant.
-J (JUMPify Longer Branches)
- Many 32-bit computers permit a variety of branch instructions
to do the same job. Some of these instructions are short (and
fast) but have a limited range; others are long (and slow) but
can branch anywhere in virtual memory. Often there are 3
flavors of branch: short, medium and long. Some other
assemblers would emit short and medium branches, unless told by
this option to emit short and long branches.
-t (Temporary File Directory)
- Some other assemblers may use a temporary file, and this option
takes a filename being the directory to site the temporary
file. Since
as
does not use a temporary disk file, this
option makes no difference. -t needs exactly one
filename.
The Vax version of the assembler accepts additional options when
compiled for VMS:
- -h n
- External symbol or section (used for global variables) names are not
case sensitive on VAX/VMS and always mapped to upper case. This is
contrary to the C language definition which explicitly distinguishes
upper and lower case. To implement a standard conforming C compiler,
names must be changed (mapped) to preserve the case information. The
default mapping is to convert all lower case characters to uppercase and
adding an underscore followed by a 6 digit hex value, representing a 24
digit binary value. The one digits in the binary value represent which
characters are uppercase in the original symbol name.
The -h n option determines how we map names. This takes
several values. No -h switch at all allows case hacking as
described above. A value of zero (-h0) implies names should be
upper case, and inhibits the case hack. A value of 2 (-h2)
implies names should be all lower case, with no case hack. A value of 3
(-h3) implies that case should be preserved. The value 1 is
unused. The -H
option directs as
to display
every mapped symbol during assembly.
Symbols whose names include a dollar sign $ are exceptions to the
general name mapping. These symbols are normally only used to reference
VMS library names. Such symbols are always mapped to upper case.
- -+
- The -+ option causes
as
to truncate any symbol
name larger than 31 characters. The -+ option also prevents some
code following the _main symbol normally added to make the object
file compatible with Vax-11 "C".
- -1
- This option is ignored for backward compatibility with
as
version 1.x.
- -H
- The -H option causes
as
to print every symbol
which was changed by case mapping.