gas macro arguments or escapes botched, perhaps related to ONLY_STANDARD_ESCAPES

gas macro arguments or escapes botched, perhaps related to ONLY_STANDARD_ESCAPES

[Hans-Peter Nilsson]

Targets that define ONLY_STANDARD_ESCAPES find themselves
failing the gas test "strings" in
gas/testsuite/gas/macros/macros.exp.  The only target in CVS
that does this is currently avr, which might explain why the
failure slipped through everyones extensive testsuite runs.

This happened sometime during the last (two?) weeks.

gas.log snippet for avr-elf:
../as-new   -o dump.o /home/hp/binutils/cvs_write/src/gas/testsuite/gas/macros/strings.s
/home/hp/binutils/cvs_write/src/gas/testsuite/gas/macros/strings.s: Assembler messages:
/home/hp/binutils/cvs_write/src/gas/testsuite/gas/macros/strings.s:0: Warning: Unknown escape '\a' in string: Ignored
FAIL: strings

I'll probably eventually get around to analyze it more
thoroughly and perhaps fix it, but why wait.  The bug might even
be a invalid testcase for all I know right now.

brgds, H-P

Re: gas macro arguments or escapes botched, perhaps related to ONLY_STANDARD_ESCAPES

[Ulf Carlsson]

Hi Hans-Peter,

 > Targets that define ONLY_STANDARD_ESCAPES find themselves failing
 > the gas test "strings" in gas/testsuite/gas/macros/macros.exp.  The
 > only target in CVS that does this is currently avr, which might
 > explain why the failure slipped through everyones extensive
 > testsuite runs.

The problem is not an invalid testcase.  ONLY_STANDARD_ESCAPES was
defined in MIPS as well, but I removed it since it does more harm than
good.  If you want to use an argument name in an ascii string inside a
macro you have to use an argument name that gives you a standard
escape sequence:

.macro narg1
	.ascii "\narg1"
.endm

Instead of how you normally would write it:

.macro arg1
       .ascii "\arg1"
.endm

 > I'll probably eventually get around to analyze it more thoroughly
 > and perhaps fix it, but why wait.  The bug might even be a invalid
 > testcase for all I know right now.

I think the problem has been in gas for years.  Feel free to fix it.

Ulf