Meta-Assembler (MASM) Programming Reference Manual

MASM Usage
2.3. Input
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This section defines the MASM input format, requirements, and rules.
2.3.1. Statements
MASM processes the input presented to it by statements, where a statement is one or
more lines of input text and a line is an 80-character image. A statement has the
following parts:
The functional part that is interpreted by MASM
The comment part that provides additional information to the reader (see 2.3.3.4)
The functional part of a statement has the following fields:
Label field (see 2.3.3.1)
Operation field (see 2.3.3.2)
Operand field (see 2.3.3.3)
Each field can contain subfields. All of the fields and subfields following the label field
are in free form. The label field must begin in column 1 of the symbolic line. Any or all
of the fields can be void. Fields are generally bounded by one or more spaces; subfields
are bounded by commas.
MASM completes the interpretation of the functional part of a line when it encounters
one of the following:
The maximum number of fields and subfields required by the operation
The 80th character
The line terminator space-period-space ( . )
A line continuation character ( ; ) that is not included in a string enclosed in
quotation marks
Example 1
PF $FORM 12,6,18 . FORM DEFINITION
This example uses all four fields. PF is the label; FORM is the operation field; 12,6,18 are
three subfields in the operand field; characters to the right of the period make up the
comment.
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