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Q44743: Major Changes between QuickC 2.00 and Quick Assembler

Article: Q44743
Product(s): See article
Version(s): 2.01
Operating System(s): MS-DOS
Keyword(s): ENDUSER | | mspl13_masm
Last Modified: 26-JUN-1989

The following lists the major changes between QuickC 2.00 and Quick
Assembler 2.01:

 1. Quick Assembler 2.01 is bundled with a modified QuickC which has
    version number 2.01 (this can be found by typing QCL at the DOS
    command prompt).

 2. Quick Assembler is a super-set of QuickC. It contains ALL of the
    functionality and capabilities of QuickC, with the additional power
    of a quick assembler.

 3. Quick Assembler does not exist without a QuickC 2.01. It is a
    bundled package. There will continue to be a stand alone QuickC
    2.00 package, but no stand alone Quick Assembler.

 4. No Floppy Disk Support: Quick Assembler requires a hard disk. It
    does not support execution on a floppy disk system.

 5. New Type Casts for debugging: BY, WO, DW are used by CodeView to
    simulate MASM <type> PTR. These type casts are now acceptable to
    the Watch expression evaluator in the Quick environment.

    Note: BY <reg>      is the same as * (char *) <reg>
          BY <addrexpr> is same as  * (char *) <addrexpr>
          BY <var>      is the same as * (char *) &<var>

    WO and DW behave analogously, with WO equivalent to * (int*) and
    DW equivalent to * (long *).

 6. Segmentation Support: The colon ':' operator is recognized
    as indicating a full segmented address in Watch expressions. The
    segment portion can be either a segment register or a numeric
    value.

 8. .COM File Production and Debugging: Quick Assembler allows for
    both the production and debugging of .COM files. LINK.EXE has been
    modified to check if /TINY and /CODEVIEW are both specified. If
    so, the symbolic information will be emitted into a separate .DEB
    file (instead of placing it in the .EXE file as per normal).

    The debugger checks the extension of the file it is loading, and
    if it is a .COM, the debugger will get CodeView information from
    the .DEB file.

    Note: This support of .COM files is currently restricted to the
    Quick Assembler and does not extend to the QuickC portion of the
    package. Microsoft is actively pursuing extending the .COM support
    to a future release of QuickC.

 9. Ten-Byte Real Support: In assembly, ten-byte reals may be defined
    using the DT directive. Support has been added to allow Watches of
    ten-byte reals, and to allow their values to be modified using
    Debug.Modify Value. As in CodeView, they will not be allowed in
    expressions.

10. Screen Swapping: The debugger will force screen swapping when
    tracing a file with a .ASM extension so that direct output is not
    misplaced.

11. First Trace into Assembly Programs: The first Trace into a pure
    assembly program (i.e., no C startup code) will actually execute the
    first statement. This differs from CodeView and the way the QuickC
    debugger operates on .C files.

12. Qasm will be called by QCL: The Quick Assembler will be directly
    callable through QCL. This means that when a *.ASM file is
    specified to QCL it will invoke Qasm with all arguments passed
    through unchanged.

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