IBM Mainframe Forum

Does B SETOP(R1) mean branch to the address of SETOP + the number of bytes in R1.

So if R1 is 0 then branch to SETOP LR R1,R7
If R1 is 4 then branch to SETOP LR R1,R5
If R1 is 8 then branch to SETOP LR R7,R5
If R1 is 12 then branch to SETOP LA RC,CHKTWIN ? Since the instructions in between takes 4 bytes.Is my understanding correct?

Also why do we have ?Here I think we are equivating the current address to BYOP but why ? Can't we just have ?

For your latter question, if you later have to do maintenance on the code and add an instruction before the LH R0,16(R4) -- having BYOP EQU * means you can do so easily by inserting the line between this line and the LH line. However, if the BYOP is on the LH instruction, you'll have additional work to move the BYOP to the correct location.

These users thanked the author Robert Sample for the post:

ramkumar1992sp (Sat Jan 28, 2017 12:23 am)

Thanks Robert.

I'm just rephrasing my first question since I felt it wasn't clear earlier.

So if R1 contains a value of 0 in it then branch to SETOP LR R1,R7
If R1 contains a value of 4 in it then branch to SETOP LR R1,R5
If R1 contains a value of 8 in it then branch to SETOP LR R7,R5
If R1 contains a value of 12 in it then branch to SETOP LA RC,CHKTWIN ? Since the instructions in between takes 4 bytes.Is my understanding correct?

XX EQU * in a stream of instructions.

This is actually a little controversial. Mr. Sample gives excellent reasons why it's a good thing. Others, like me, avoid it. Why? Two words: boundary alignment. In System/360 derived architectures, an instruction must be on a half word boundary to execute. EQU * does not imply boundary alignment, so it is possible the symbol it defines will not be on a half word boundary.

HASP for OS/360 included the NULL programmer macro, something like:

It was used as

symbol NULL

The symbol would automatically aligned on a half word boundary, so it could be (and was) used in place of EQU *.

Now I am not saying Mr. Sample is wrong. When it seems appropriate, I will use

symbol DS 0H rather than EQU *.

Thanks Steve.