## ALP Programming Guide and Reference

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### Installing ALP

ALP consists of two files:

    alp . exe
    alp . msg

You can rename the root portions of the two file names if desired. In most cases, it does not matter whether the file names are in upper- or lowercase because the default OS/2 file systems disregard case. It is possible, however, that the use of an OS/2 Installable File System (IFS) might require that file names be referenced exactly as they are named with respect to upper- and lowercase. If this is true, then the root portion of the alp.exe and alp.msg file names (see BaseEXE) must be spelled identically and the .msg extension on the messages file name must be specified in lowercase or the assembler will not be able to find the messages file at run time.

To install ALP on OS/2:

1.Copy alp.exe into a directory of your choice. If the assembler will be invoked from the command line (rather than by absolute reference from a makefile or command file), then the selected directory should be among those referenced by the PATH environment variable.

2.For best performance, the alp.msg file should be copied into the same directory used in step 1 or in a directory referenced by the <BaseEXE>_PATH environment variable. It is not necessary to set any additional environment variables if the first method is used.

Alternatively, a directory referenced by the DPATH environment variable may also be used, but performance may be degraded during initialization, since the assembler must search all of the listed directories for the alp.msg file. See The ALP Messages File for more information.

3.Optionally, default values for command line options may be established. See <BaseEXE>_OPTIONS for more information.