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 two options when compiled for VMS. They are `-h', and `-+'. The `-h' option prevents as from modifying the symbol-table entries for symbols that contain lowercase characters (I think). The `-+' option causes as to print warning messages if the FILENAME part of the object file, or any symbol name is larger than 31 characters. The `-+' option also inserts some code following the `_main' symbol so that the object file is compatible with Vax-11 "C".