Comments

There are two ways of rendering comments to as. In both cases the comment is equivalent to one space.

Anything from `/*' through the next `*/' is a comment. This means you may not nest these comments.

/*
  The only way to include a newline ('\n') in a comment
  is to use this sort of comment.
*/

/* This sort of comment does not nest. */

Anything from the line comment character to the next newline is considered a comment and is ignored. The line comment character is `#' on the Vax; `#' on the i960; `!' on the SPARC; `|' on the 680x0; `;' for the AMD 29K family; `;' for the H8/300 family; `!' for the H8/500 family; `;' for the HPPA; `!' for the Hitachi SH; `!' for the Z8000; see section Machine Dependent Features.

On some machines there are two different line comment characters. One character only begins a comment if it is the first non-whitespace character on a line, while the other always begins a comment.

To be compatible with past assemblers, lines that begin with `#' have a special interpretation. Following the `#' should be an absolute expression (see section Expressions): the logical line number of the next line. Then a string (see section Strings) is allowed: if present it is a new logical file name. The rest of the line, if any, should be whitespace.

If the first non-whitespace characters on the line are not numeric, the line is ignored. (Just like a comment.)

                          # This is an ordinary comment.
# 42-6 "new_file_name"    # New logical file name
                          # This is logical line # 36.