## ALP Programming Guide and Reference

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### Comments

Description

Examples

Comments are language elements that have significance only to the programmer and not to the assembler. Comments are effectively removed from the input stream during the text preprocessing phase.

There are two classes of comments recognized by ALP:

Comments that start with a character sequence and continue to the end of the line (EndOfLine-Comment)

Comments that start with a character sequence and continue until the occurrence of another character sequence (Block-Comment). See the COMMENT directive for a description of Block-Comment s.

There are two types of EndOfLine-Comment s:

Macro-Comment

Macro-Comments (beginning with two semicolons) do not appear in the listing output even when the .LALL directive is used. Use of Macro-Comments can significantly reduce the amount of memory workspace used by the definition of a macro. As a macro definition is read, Macro-Comments are discarded and not entered into the macro definition, whereas NonMacro-Comments are treated as normal text and are retained.

NonMacro-Comment

NonMacro-Comment (beginning with a single semicolon) are preserved in macro definitions and appear in the listing output during macro expansions.

Comment:
EndOfLine-Comment
Block-Comment
EndOfLine-Comment:
NonMacro-Comment
Macro-Comment
NonMacro-Comment:
; Char-Sequence
Macro-Comment:
;; Char-Sequence
Char-Sequence:
any printable character
Char-Sequence any printable character
Block-Comment:
See the COMMENT directive