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<h4 class="subsection">9.13.3 Syntax</h4>
<p>The assembler syntax closely follows the HPPA instruction set
reference manual; assembler directives and general syntax closely follow the
HPPA assembly language reference manual, with a few noteworthy differences.
<p>First, a colon may immediately follow a label definition. This is
simply for compatibility with how most assembly language programmers
write code.
<p>Some obscure expression parsing problems may affect hand written code which
uses the <code>spop</code> instructions, or code which makes significant
use of the <code>!</code> line separator.
<p><code>as</code> is much less forgiving about missing arguments and other
similar oversights than the HP assembler. <code>as</code> notifies you
of missing arguments as syntax errors; this is regarded as a feature, not a
bug.
<p>Finally, <code>as</code> allows you to use an external symbol without
explicitly importing the symbol. <em>Warning:</em> in the future this will be
an error for HPPA targets.
<p>Special characters for HPPA targets include:
<p>‘<samp><span class="samp">;</span></samp>’ is the line comment character.
<p>‘<samp><span class="samp">!</span></samp>’ can be used instead of a newline to separate statements.
<p>Since ‘<samp><span class="samp">$</span></samp>’ has no special meaning, you may use it in symbol names.
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