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16<title>Using as: Preprocessing</title>
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63<a name="Preprocessing"></a>
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65<p>
66Next: <a href="Whitespace.html#Whitespace" accesskey="n" rel="next">Whitespace</a>, Up: <a href="Syntax.html#Syntax" accesskey="u" rel="up">Syntax</a> &nbsp; [<a href="index.html#SEC_Contents" title="Table of contents" rel="contents">Contents</a>][<a href="AS-Index.html#AS-Index" title="Index" rel="index">Index</a>]</p>
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69<a name="Preprocessing-1"></a>
70<h3 class="section">3.1 Preprocessing</h3>
71
72<a name="index-preprocessing"></a>
73<p>The <code>as</code> internal preprocessor:
74</p><ul>
75<li> <a name="index-whitespace_002c-removed-by-preprocessor"></a>
76adjusts and removes extra whitespace.  It leaves one space or tab before
77the keywords on a line, and turns any other whitespace on the line into
78a single space.
79
80</li><li> <a name="index-comments_002c-removed-by-preprocessor"></a>
81removes all comments, replacing them with a single space, or an
82appropriate number of newlines.
83
84</li><li> <a name="index-constants_002c-converted-by-preprocessor"></a>
85converts character constants into the appropriate numeric values.
86</li></ul>
87
88<p>It does not do macro processing, include file handling, or
89anything else you may get from your C compiler&rsquo;s preprocessor.  You can
90do include file processing with the <code>.include</code> directive
91(see <a href="Include.html#Include"><code>.include</code></a>).  You can use the <small>GNU</small> C compiler driver
92to get other &ldquo;CPP&rdquo; style preprocessing by giving the input file a
93&lsquo;<samp>.S</samp>&rsquo; suffix.  <a href="https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Overall-Options.html#Overall-Options">See the &rsquo;Options Controlling the Kind of Output&rsquo; section of the GCC manual for
94more details</a>
95</p>
96<p>Excess whitespace, comments, and character constants
97cannot be used in the portions of the input text that are not
98preprocessed.
99</p>
100<a name="index-turning-preprocessing-on-and-off"></a>
101<a name="index-preprocessing_002c-turning-on-and-off"></a>
102<a name="index-_0023NO_005fAPP"></a>
103<a name="index-_0023APP"></a>
104<p>If the first line of an input file is <code>#NO_APP</code> or if you use the
105&lsquo;<samp>-f</samp>&rsquo; option, whitespace and comments are not removed from the input file.
106Within an input file, you can ask for whitespace and comment removal in
107specific portions of the by putting a line that says <code>#APP</code> before the
108text that may contain whitespace or comments, and putting a line that says
109<code>#NO_APP</code> after this text.  This feature is mainly intend to support
110<code>asm</code> statements in compilers whose output is otherwise free of comments
111and whitespace.
112</p>
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