Re: Vbdos link fix

 BBS: Inland Empire Archive
Date: 12-28-92 (20:29)             Number: 399
From: ROBERT CHURCH                Refer#: NONE
  To: RICH GELDREICH                Recvd: NO  
Subj: Re: Vbdos link fix             Conf: (2) Quik_Bas

 RG>     Mark Butler sent me out a great snippets disk a few months ago,
 RG> containing a ton of usefull stuff from this echo. I found a program
 RG> posted by you that converted BC's "/a" source listing output into an
 RG> (almost) usable ASM file...

That would be useful, Rich.

 RG>     Recently I read a message on another network(ILINK's BASIC echo I
 RG> think) that mentioned a metacommand that changed the line length of BC's
 RG> listing file. If this metacommand does what I think it should, then the
 RG> problem with lines getting chopped off would be solved...

 RG>     Here's the question: I can't find the damned metacommand's syntax!
 RG> I can't find the original message I'm referring to, and I cannot locate
 RG> any mention of this metacommand in my QB manual or on the online help.
 RG> Does anybody know what it is? (Something link '$LINELENGTH 255, but
 RG> since MicroSoft made the BC compiler it of course isn't that simple.)

I can help you out!  In the March/April '92 issue of
BASICPro, Ethan Winer had an article about controlling
compilation.  It explained all of the command line switches
and the undocumented mettacommands.  The one you want is:

'$LINESIZE: 255

That would set the line length to 255 characters.  Here are some more:

'$LIST+ or '$LIST-  Turns listing on or off.
'$PAGE  tells BC to start a new page in the listing here...
'$PAGEIF: <n>  specifies that a new page is to be started if there are <n>
               lines left on the current page.
'$PAGESIZE: <n> specifies the number of lines on a page
'$OCODE+ or '$OCODE- turns on or off the assembly listing
'$SKIP: <n> causes <n> blank lines in the listing
'$TITLE: 'PROG TITLE!' chages header
'$SUBTITLE: 'SUB-PROG TITLE!' "

 RG>     Well, back to the issue at hand. I invision a program which will
 RG> take BC's /a output and convert it into a usable ASM file. This would
 RG> allow inline assembly, private subroutines, NEAR calls, and hand
 RG> optimization of their QB code!

It would be nice.  I wonder why Microsoft didn't just do it
that way in the first place?  Borland did.  You can take
the ASM output from my TC 3.0 and assemble it with TASM
straight up.

[-= Rob -=]


--- Squish v1.01
 * Origin: -= The Floating Point =- Hillsboro, Oregon, USA,
Earth (1:105/330.3)