vasm - Warn when addressing absolute 16-bit memory?

[dansalvato]

Hello, I'm wondering if it's possible for vasm (or something else in the build stack) to provide a warning if an instruction is addressing an absolute 16-bit memory address. This only ever happens in my code if I typo, so it would help a lot to preemptively find these bugs if the assembler could warn me about it.

For example, sometimes I accidentally type something like this:

move.w $10(a4),d0

As this:

move.w $10,d0

Any suggestions on how to catch this during build?

[paraj]

Maybe I'm wrong, but I doubt any amiga assembler would warn about that. The major issue being the obviously correct

move.l 4.w,..

and less (depending on context) reading/setting of interrupt routines.

Is this really an issue you've encountered with literal offsets or only with "named" offsets? Asking because I've not really had an issue with the former, while the later might be worth looking at adding more "guard rails" for if possible in a compatible way (IMO).

[dansalvato]

Originally Posted by paraj

Maybe I'm wrong, but I doubt any amiga assembler would warn about that. The major issue being the obviously correct

move.l 4.w,..

and less (depending on context) reading/setting of interrupt routines.

Is this really an issue you've encountered with literal offsets or only with "named" offsets? Asking because I've not really had an issue with the former, while the later might be worth looking at adding more "guard rails" for if possible in a compatible way (IMO).

This is a good point. I only encounter it with named offsets, and only during part of the build process where I use the -pic (position-independent code) assembler option. I have module files that I build with -pic that are only supposed to address memory using a base register.

I could do this the quick and dirty way by writing a script that parses my code and looks for these errors, but I was just hoping a more formal mechanism existed.

[NorthWay]

Originally Posted by paraj

Maybe I'm wrong, but I doubt any amiga assembler would warn about that.

Something in the back of my head says BAsm will get cranky about it unless opted out?

[Asman]

Originally Posted by NorthWay

Something in the back of my head says BAsm will get cranky about it unless opted out?

yes, as far as I remember, basm generate warning about that by default.

in source you can disable it in following way

 IFD BARFLY

 BOPT   w4-            ;disable 64k warnings

 ENDC	;END IFD BARFLY

[DJ Mike]

Yes, Barfly definitely warns about vector accesses by default. I get caught out by this when recompiling disassembled game code.

My similar typo mistake is usually forgetting to put # when using constants, e.g.

move.b $10,d0

instead of:

move.b #$10,d0