Chapter 4 Macro Processors

System Software Chih-Shun Hsu

Introduction

A macro represents a commonly used group of statements in the source programming language The macro processor replaces each macro instruction with the corresponding group of source language statement, this is called expanding macros The functions of a macro processor essentially involve the substitution of one group of characters or lines for another

Macro Definition and Expansion

The MACRO statement identifies the beginning of a macro definition The symbol in the label field is the name of the instruction The entries in the operand field identify the parameter of the macro instruction Each parameter begins with the character & The MEND assembler directive marks the end of the macro definition A macro invocation statement gives the name of the macro instruction being invoked and the arguments to be used in expanding the macro

Use of macros in a SIC/XE Program(3/1)

Use of macros in a SIC/XE Program(3/2)

Use of macros in a SIC/XE Program(3/3)

Program with Macro Expanded(3/1)

Program with Macro Expanded(3/2)

Program with Macro Expanded(3/3)

Macro Processor Data Structures

The macro definitions themselves are stored in definition table (DEFTAB), which contains the macro prototype and the statements that make up the macro body The macro names are entered into NAMTAB, which serves as an index to DEFTAB For each macro instruction defined NAMTAB contains pointers to the beginning and end of the definition in DEFTAB The third data structure is an argument table (ARGTAB), which is used during the expansion of macro invocations When a macro invocation statement is recognized, the arguments are stored in ARGTAB according to their position in the argument list

Macro Processor Data Structures

Algorithm for a One-pass Macro Processor(3/1)

Algorithm for a One-pass Macro Processor(3/2)

Algorithm for a One-pass Macro Processor(3/3)

Machine-Independent Macro Processor Features

Concatenation of Macro Parameters(2/1)

Most macro processors allow parameters to concatenated with other character strings If similar processing is to be performed on each series of variables, the programmer might want to incorporate this processing in to a macro instruction The body of the macro definition might contain a statement like LDA X&ID1 in which the parameter &ID is concatenated after the character string X and before the character string 1 If the macro definition contained both &ID and &ID1 as parameters, the situation would be ambiguous Most macro processors deal with this problem by providing a special concatenation operator (e.g. ) LDA X&ID1

Concatenation of Macro Parameters(2/2)

Generation of Unique Labels

Relative addressing in a source statement may be acceptable for short jumps such as JEQ *-3* For longer jumps spanning several instructions, such notation is very inconvenient, error-prone and difficult to read Allow the creation of special types of labels Each symbol beginning with $ has been modified by replacing $ with $xx, where xx is a two character alphanumeric counter of the number of macro instructions expanded For the first macro expansions, xx will have the value AA For succeeding macro expansions, xx will be set to AB, AC, etc

Generation of Unique Labels with Macro Expansion(2/1)

Generation of Unique Labels with Macro Expansion(2/1)

Conditional Macro Expansion(2/1)

Most macro processors can modify the sequence of statements generated for a macro expansion, depending on the arguments supplied in the macro invocation The IF statement evaluates a Boolean expression that is its operand If the value of this expression is TRUE, the statements following the IF are generated until an ELSE is encountered Otherwise, these statements are skipped, and the statements following the ELSE are generated The ENDIF statement terminates the conditional expression that was begun by the IF statement

Conditional Macro Expansion(2/2)

The macro processor must maintain a symbol table that contains the values of all macro-time variables used Entries in this table are made or modified when SET statements are processed The implementation outlined above does not allow for nested IF structures WHILE: a macro-time looping statement The WHILE statement specifies that the following lines, until the next ENDW statement, are to be generated repeatedly as long as a particular condition is true The macro-time variable &CTR is used to count the number of times the lines following the WHILE statement have been generated

Use of Macro-time Conditional Statements(5/1)

Use of Macro-time Conditional Statements(5/2)

Use of Macro-time Conditional Statements(5/3)

Use of Macro-time Conditional Statements(5/4)

Use of Macro-time Conditional Statements(5/5)

Use of Macro-time looping Statements(2/1)

Use of Macro-time looping Statements(2/2)

Keyword Macro Parameters

Positional parameter: parameters and arguments were associated with each other according to their positions in the macro prototype and the macro invocation statement Keyword parameters: each argument value is written with a keyword that named the corresponding parameter Each parameter name is followed by an equal sign, which identifies a keyword parameter The parameter is assumed to have the default value if its name does not appear in the macro invocation statement

Use of Keyword Parameters in Macro Instructions(3/1)

Use of Keyword Parameters in Macro Instructions(3/2)

Use of Keyword Parameters in Macro Instructions(3/3)

Macro Processor Design Options

Recursive Macro Expansion

Macro within macro can be solved if the macro processor is being written in a programming language that allows recursive calls The compiler would be sure that previous value of any variables declared within a procedure were saved when that procedure was called recursively If would take care of other details involving return from the procedure

Example of Nested Macro Invocation(2/1)

Example of Nested Macro Invocation(2/2)

General-Purpose Macro Processors(2/1)

Advantages of general-purpose macro processors:

programmer does not need to learn about a different macro facility for each compiler or assembler languagethe time and expense involved in training are eliminated The costs involved in producing a general-purpose macro processor are somewhat greater than those for developing a language-specific processor However, this expense does not need to be repeated for each language; the result is substantial overall saving in software development cost

General-Purpose Macro Processors(2/2)

A general-purpose facility must provide some way for a user to define the specific set of rules to be followed Comments should usually be ignored by a macro processor, however, each programming language has its own methods for identifying comments Each programming language has different facilities for grouping terms, expressions, or statementsa generalpurpose macro processor needs to taking these grouping into account Languages differ substantially in their restrictions on the length of identifiers and the rules for the formation of constants Programming languages have different basic statement formssyntax used for macro definitions and macro invocation statements

Macro Processing within Language Translators(2/1)

The macro processor reads the source statements and performs all of its functions, the output lines are passed to the language translator as they are generated The macro processor operates as a sort of input routine for the assembler or compiler The line-by-line approach avoids making an extra pass over the source program, so it can be more efficient than using a macro preprocessor Some of the data structures required by the macro processor and the language translator can be combined A line-by-line macro processor also makes it easier to give diagnostic messages that are related to the source statement containing the error

Macro Processing within Language Translators(2/2)

An integrated macro processor can potentially make use of any information about the source program that is extracted by the language translator An integrated macro processor can support macro instructions that depend upon the context in which they occur Line-by-line macro processors must be specially designed and written to work with a particular implementation of an assembler or compiler, which results in a more expensive piece of software The assembler or compiler will be considerably larger and more complex than it would be The additional complexity will add to the overhead of language translation

MASM Macro Processor(2/1)

The macro processor of MASM is integrated with Pass 1 of the assembler MASM generates the unique names of local labels in the form ??n, where n is a hexadecimal number in the range 0000 to FFFF .ERR: signals to MASM that an error has been detected EXITM: directs MASM to terminate the expansion of the macro &: is a concatenation operator

MASM Macro Processor(2/2)

;; is a macro comment, serves only as documentation for the macro definition ; is an ordinary assembler language comment, included as part of the macro expansion IRP: sets the macro-time variable to a sequence of values specified in <> The statements between the TRP and the matching ENDM are generated once for each value of the variable

Examples of MASM Macro and Conditional Statements(3/1)

Examples of MASM Macro and Conditional Statements(3/2)

Examples of MASM Macro and Conditional Statements(3/3)

Example of MASM Iteration Statement

ANSI C Macro Language

In the ANSI C language, definitions and invocations of macros are handled by a preprocessor, which is generally not integrated with the rest of the compiler #define ABSDIFF(X,Y) X>Y ? X-Y : Y-X #define DISPLAY(EXPR) printf(#EXPR=%d\n,EXPR) Macro in ANSI C may contain definitions or invocations of other macros DISPLAY(ABSDIFF(3,8))ABSDIFF(3,8)=5 The ANSI C preprocessor also provides conditional compilation statements #ifndef BUFFER_SIZE #define BUFFER_SIZE 1024 #endif

The ELENA Macro Processor

Macro definitions in ELENA are composed of a header and a body The header consists of keywords and parameter markers, which are identified by the character % At least one of the first two token s in a macro header must be a keyword, not a parameter marker The macro processor appends a numeric value to create unique labels ELENA provides macro-time variables and macro-time instructions that can be used to control the macro expansion The IF statement is a macro-time conditional go to statement The macro is identified by the sequence of keywords that appear in its header

Examples of ELENA Macro Definition and Invocation(2/1)

Examples of ELENA Macro Definition and Invocation(2/2)

Example of ELENA Macro-time Instructions(2/1)

Example of ELENA Macro-time Instructions(2/1)