home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- ---EXMAC.DOC---
-
- EXMAC Macro Expansion Tool
-
- There is a tool called EXMAC which will help you troubleshoot A86 program lines
- that call macros. If you are not sure about what code is being generated by
- your macro calls, EXMAC will tell you.
-
- To use this tool, you must first assemble your macro definitions, to produce a
- symbol-table file. If your entire program assembled without errors, then you
- will already have this symbols-file; it is usually called myprog.SYM, where
- "myprog" is the name of your .COM file. If your program did not assemble
- correctly, the symbol-table file will be named "fname.SYM", where fname is
- the name of the source file that contained errors.
-
- EXMAC can be used in two different ways. First, it can be used as an
- interactive program. You invoke the program in this way by typing just
- "EXMAC myprog", where myprog.SYM is the name of the symbols-file. Then you can
- type in any number of macro-call lines. After each line, the program will
- display the expanded program text it produces. If the program does not think
- your line is a macro call, it will simply echo the line back to you.
-
- The second way of using EXMAC is to feed a source-file to it. It will output
- the equivalent source-file with the macros expanded. You may then, if you wish,
- rename the new file as the original source file, and assemble the new file.
- This method is useful if you get an error on a macro expansion line, and you
- don't know where the error came from. To use EXMAC in this second way, you
- simply redirect standard input and output: "EXMAC myprog <in >out".
-