HLASM Language Reference

Assembler Language Structure
DC CL(L'STRLEN )' ' Space not within quotes
The following example shows a space enclosed in quotes, as part of a string. This
space is properly accounted for:
MVC
AREA1,=C'This Area' Space inside quotes
| In quotes, spaces and parentheses can occur in any quantity and in any order:
LA
R1,=C'This is OK (isn''t it)'
Remarks Entries: Remarks are used to describe the current instruction. The
following rules apply to remarks:
Remarks are optional.
They can contain any character from the EBCDIC character set, or the
double-byte characters set.
They can follow any operand entry.
In statements in which an optional operand entry is omitted, but you want to
code a comment, indicate the absence of the operand by a comma preceded
and followed by one or more spaces, as shown below:
END , End of Program
Assembler Language Structure
This section describes the structure of the assembler language, including the
statements that are allowed in the language, and the elements that make up those
statements.
“Statement Coding Rules” on page 19 describes the composition of an assembler
language source statement.
The figures in this section show the overall structure of the statements that
represent the assembler language instructions, and are not specifications for these
instructions. The individual instructions, their purposes, and their specifications are
described in other sections of this manual.
Model statements, used to generate assembler language statements, are described
in Chapter 7, “How to Specify Macro Definitions.”
The remarks entry in a source statement is not processed by the assembler, but it
is printed in the assembler listing. For this reason, it is only shown in the overview
of the assembler language structure in Figure 7 on page 23, and not in the other
figures.
The machine instruction statements are described in Figure 8 on page 24,
discussed in Chapter 4, “Machine Instruction Statements,” and summarized in the
applicable Principles of Operation manual.
Assembler instruction statements are described in Figure 9 on page 25, discussed
in Chapter 3, “Program Structures and Addressing” and Chapter 5, “Assembler
Instruction Statements,” and are summarized in Appendix A, “Assembler
Instructions.”
Chapter 2. Coding and Structure 21