Directive (programming) in the context of Preprocessor

⭐ Core Definition: Directive (programming)

In computer programming, a directive or pragma (from "pragmatic") is a language construct that specifies how a compiler (or other translator) should process its input. Depending on the programming language, directives may or may not be part of the grammar of the language and may vary from compiler to compiler. They can be processed by a preprocessor to specify compiler behavior, or function as a form of in-band parameterization.

In some cases directives specify global behavior, while in other cases they only affect a local section, such as a block of programming code. In some cases, such as some C programs, directives are optional compiler hints and may be ignored, but normally they are prescriptive and must be followed. However, a directive does not perform any action in the language itself, but rather only a change in the behavior of the compiler.

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Directive (programming) in the context of Assembly language

In computing, assembly language (alternatively assembler language or symbolic machine code), often referred to simply as assembly and commonly abbreviated as ASM or asm, is any low-level programming language with a very strong correspondence between the instructions in the language and the architecture's machine code instructions. Assembly language usually has one statement per machine code instruction (1:1), but constants, comments, assembler directives, symbolic labels of, e.g., memory locations, registers, and macros are generally also supported.

The first assembly code in which a language is used to represent machine code instructions is found in Kathleen and Andrew Donald Booth's 1947 work, Coding for A.R.C.. Assembly code is converted into executable machine code by a utility program referred to as an assembler. The term "assembler" is generally attributed to Wilkes, Wheeler and Gill in their 1951 book The Preparation of Programs for an Electronic Digital Computer, who, however, used the term to mean "a program that assembles another program consisting of several sections into a single program". The conversion process is referred to as assembly, as in assembling the source code. The computational step when an assembler is processing a program is called assembly time.

View the full Wikipedia page for Assembly language

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Directive (programming) in the context of Preprocessor

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⭐ Core Definition: Directive (programming)

Directive (programming) in the context of Assembly language