9.21.6.2 Special Characters

Line comments are introduced by the ‘|’ character appearing anywhere on a line, unless the --bitwise-or command-line option has been specified.

An asterisk (‘*’) as the first character on a line marks the start of a line comment as well.

A hash character (‘#’) as the first character on a line also marks the start of a line comment, but in this case it could also be a logical line number directive (see Comments) or a preprocessor control command (see Preprocessing). If the hash character appears elsewhere on a line it is used to introduce an immediate value. (This is for compatibility with Sun’s assembler).

Multiple statements on the same line can appear if they are separated by the ‘;’ character.