The three types of assembly language statements are:
- Machine instructions
- Macro calls
- Assembler directives
Instructions, directives, and macro names are case insensitive: the assembler considers
MOV,
Mov, and
mov to be the same instruction.
Remember these rules for assembly language statements:
- A statement must reside on a single line; the maximum length of a statement is 512 characters.
- You can concatenate two or more lines into one statement by typing a backslash (\) character at the end of lines. But such a concatenated statement must not exceed the 512-character limit.
- There is no limit to macro expansion, but individual statements and concatenated statements must not exceed the 512-character limit.
- Each line of the source file can contain only one statement unless the assembler is running in GNU mode. (This mode allows multiple statements on one line, with semicolon separators.)
The processor-specific chapter of this manual tells you where find machine instructions for your target processor. Other chapters of this manual provide more information about assembler directives and macros.