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AnachronautandClaude Opus 5 20989c3439 M3: programs that bring their own vectors
> load Asm.sbx
    > run Keys.asm
    wrote Keys.sbx: program 558, data 85, labels 52
    > load Keys.sbx
    > run
    keys, by interrupt. q stops.
    ab
    the console has been handed back

The machine assembles a program carrying an interrupt handler, the loader
installs its vector, the console interrupts into it, and the shell takes the
vector back at exit. Byte for byte identical to the C assembler's, and
Tests/native.sh now checks a boot image and four loadable programs on every
run.

WHAT IT TOOK:

  A declaration and an implementation are the SAME ENTRY. services.asm says
  a service is called osPrintString and has number 16; cosmos.asm says
  osPrintString is handled by handlePrintString. The name is met twice and
  the second time fills in the handler, which is what lets one shared file
  serve both the caller and the implementer.

  So the first pass declares and the second implements. That is forced: a
  handler is an address, and no address is known until every label has been
  placed.

  Boot in a loadable program fills the entry field rather than being
  installed - vector zero is where the whole machine starts, and a program
  loaded into a running system has no business saying anything about that.
  A boot image is the one thing that does, so there it is installed like any
  other, behind a "VEC" marker in the SPBT file.

  Device is named by the port, and Device with the five reserved names are
  matched without regard to case, the way mnemonics are: they are part of
  the language rather than names the programmer chose. Devices have no names
  of their own, so they are given one nothing can type.

TWO BUGS, both of a kind worth naming.

The first: "is this a loadable program" was written out as an OR of the two
segment bases in seven places, and the sense wanted is the opposite in most
of them. One of the seven had it backwards and put a version ONE header on a
file carrying vectors, which a loader is right to refuse. It is one flag
now, settled once and tested the same way everywhere.

The second: finding the entry to write a handler into means calling vecFind,
which reads the entry's fields out - including the handler it does not have
yet. An address resolved into VecHandler before the find was overwritten
with zero by the find itself, and the file came out with a vector pointing
at address zero: a slot that looked installed and went nowhere. The
resolved address has a variable of its own now.

Keys.asm and console.asm go on the CosmOS disk, so the whole path can be
watched rather than only tested.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01E2JrLzFvuFX9fgi1LDRjrW
2026-08-21 11:50:52 -04:00
AnachronautandClaude Opus 5 c5e4ec3455 M2: the native assembler builds applications
> load Asm.sbx
    > run Say.asm
    wrote Say.sbx: program 46, data 93, labels 7
    > load Say.sbx
    > run built by the machine itself
    it says: built by the machine itself

The machine assembles an application and then runs what it built. Say,
greet and Files all come out byte for byte identical to the C assembler's,
and Tests/native.sh checks all three on every run alongside the boot image
M1 already covered.

WHAT IT TOOK, and it was more than #Include and #Base:

  #Include   The reader is a stack of readers. The current file's whole
             state goes aside - buffer and all, 292 bytes - the new one
             opens, and the end of it pops the old one back. A file goes in
             once; including it twice does nothing, which is what lets two
             libraries depend on a third. The list is forgotten between the
             passes, because the second has to walk the same tree.
  #Base      Cursors start there, so labels hold the addresses the program
             will really have. A program that says where it goes gets the
             SBEX header and a .sbx name; one that says nothing gets SPBT
             and .bin. A program that bases one segment and leaves the
             other unbased with content in it is refused.
  #Reserve   Runs of zeroes, moved over in the first pass and written in
  #Align     the second. How many an #Align comes to depends on where the
             cursor has reached, which is why both passes keep a cursor.
  #Vectors   Names are read and numbered, pinned where the source pins
             them, so SWI osPrintString resolves. Every application needs
             this - a program that calls a service names a vector declared
             in a file it includes.

THE TWO PASSES ARE NOW ONE LOOP, walked twice, with Emitting the only
difference. They have to agree about the length of every token, and the way
they stop agreeing is by being two pieces of code that drifted apart -
which is the exact shape of the bug this assembler found in the C one.
Sharing the body means there is nothing to drift. What is left is checked
anyway: the second pass compares its own totals against the first's and
refuses to write the file if they differ.

THE BUG WORTH RECORDING. The tokenizer holds one character of lookahead,
and at an #Include that character belongs to the file being put aside. It
was carried across and handed back on the way out, which is wrong: a file
runs out in the middle of whatever the tokenizer happens to be doing, so
the character arrives in the middle of a word. `start:` came back as `s`
and then `tart:` - and the result assembled into a perfectly plausible
file. The fix is to undo the read instead, so the character is simply still
there when the file is opened again and the question of when to hand it
back never arises.

Three smaller ones, all old friends: three places took the CONTENTS of a
buffer where they wanted its ADDRESS; vecTakeAuto returned its answer in A,
which a RET puts back; and pass two re-declared every vector because only
the label table was being skipped on the second walk.

sameText moved down into numbers.asm from the label table - four parts want
it now, and a reader test that includes neither labels nor tokens has to
build on its own.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01E2JrLzFvuFX9fgi1LDRjrW
2026-08-20 22:50:39 -04:00