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<h4 class="subsection">6.2.1 Arguments</h4>
<p><a name="index-expression-arguments-248"></a><a name="index-arguments-in-expressions-249"></a><a name="index-operands-in-expressions-250"></a><a name="index-arithmetic-operands-251"></a><dfn>Arguments</dfn> are symbols, numbers or subexpressions. In other
contexts arguments are sometimes called “arithmetic operands”. In
this manual, to avoid confusing them with the “instruction operands” of
the machine language, we use the term “argument” to refer to parts of
expressions only, reserving the word “operand” to refer only to machine
instruction operands.
<p>Symbols are evaluated to yield {<var>section</var> <var>NNN</var>} where
<var>section</var> is one of text, data, bss, absolute,
or undefined. <var>NNN</var> is a signed, 2's complement 32 bit
integer.
<p>Numbers are usually integers.
<p>A number can be a flonum or bignum. In this case, you are warned
that only the low order 32 bits are used, and <span class="command">as</span> pretends
these 32 bits are an integer. You may write integer-manipulating
instructions that act on exotic constants, compatible with other
assemblers.
<p><a name="index-subexpressions-252"></a>Subexpressions are a left parenthesis <span class="samp">(</span> followed by an integer
expression, followed by a right parenthesis <span class="samp">)</span>; or a prefix
operator followed by an argument.
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