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<h4 class="subsection">9.11.3 Syntax</h4>

<p>The assembler syntax closely follows the HPPA instruction set
reference manual; assembler directives and general syntax closely follow the
HPPA assembly language reference manual, with a few noteworthy differences.

   <p>First, a colon may immediately follow a label definition.  This is
simply for compatibility with how most assembly language programmers
write code.

   <p>Some obscure expression parsing problems may affect hand written code which
uses the <code>spop</code> instructions, or code which makes significant
use of the <code>!</code> line separator.

   <p><code>as</code> is much less forgiving about missing arguments and other
similar oversights than the HP assembler.  <code>as</code> notifies you
of missing arguments as syntax errors; this is regarded as a feature, not a
bug.

   <p>Finally, <code>as</code> allows you to use an external symbol without
explicitly importing the symbol.  <em>Warning:</em> in the future this will be
an error for HPPA targets.

   <p>Special characters for HPPA targets include:

   <p>&lsquo;<samp><span class="samp">;</span></samp>&rsquo; is the line comment character.

   <p>&lsquo;<samp><span class="samp">!</span></samp>&rsquo; can be used instead of a newline to separate statements.

   <p>Since &lsquo;<samp><span class="samp">$</span></samp>&rsquo; has no special meaning, you may use it in symbol names.

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