English Amiga Board - Creating Macros

English Amiga Board (https://eab.abime.net/index.php)

- Coders. Tutorials (https://eab.abime.net/forumdisplay.php?f=73)

- - Creating Macros (https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=69666)

Hi,

I have already created some macros for use in my own ASM code, but I am wondering if it is possible to create a macro to print text that follows it, for example:

Code:

Print "text"

I could dump all the text strings together and select them by number, but that is time consuming and these text strings are only going to be for debugging.
I tried doing the following, but it seems to just end up pointing the address registers to nothing!

Code:

    Print    MACRO

             move.l    /1,a1

             ENDM

Is it possible to do this in DevPac 3.18?

One way of doing it (you may have to change the syntax for DevPac):

Code:

Print    macro

         lea   .text\@, a0

         ...

         bra   .done\@



.text\@  dc.b  \1

         even

.done\@

         endm

You can get rid of the branch instruction when you put the strings into another section (e.g. "data"). Or put them into a second code section and rely on the linker to merge it with your main code section, due to PC-relative references (or force the merge with some small-code option).

A separate section for strings also has the advantage that you don't need to align the address after each definition.

Code:

Print   macro

        section texts,code

.text\@ dc.b    \1

        dc.b    0



        code

        lea     .text\@(pc),a0

        bsr     print_function

        endm

If you want to create absolute output instead of an AmigaDOS executable you can still use sections, but define the layout in memory using a linker script. For example:

Code:

SECTIONS {

        . = 0x10000;

        .text: { *(CODE code) *(texts) }

        . = ALIGN(2);

        .data: { *(DATA data) }

        . = ALIGN(2);

        .sdata: {

                _LinkerDB = . + 0x7ffe;

                _SDA_BASE_ = . + 0x7ffe;

                *(.sdata __MERGED)

        }

        . = ALIGN(2);

        .bss: { *(BSS bss) }

}

Thanks for the help guys :)