6 Macro Assembler

An assembler is included with the MPLAB XC8 C Compiler to assemble source files for all 8-bit PIC devices. The assembler is automatically run by the compiler driver, xc8-cc, for any assembly source files in your project.

This chapter describes the directives (assembler pseudo-ops and controls) accepted by the assembler in the assembly source files or assembly inline with C code.

Although the term “assembler” is almost universally used to describe the tool that converts human-readable mnemonics into machine code, both “assembler” and “assembly” are used to describe the source code which such a tool reads. The latter is more common and is used in this manual to describe the language. Thus you will see the terms assembly language (or just assembly), assembly listing, assembler options, assembler directive, assembler optimizer, and other assembly terms.

The following topics are examined in this chapter of the user’s guide: