IBM does not yet have any eight-character opcodes. It seems unlikely that any will be defined soon. Macro definitions that have such 'long' names are therefore unlikely to conflict with opcode mnemonics.
As I suppose most of you know such construction as |&macname setc 'gubbins' --character value of macro name | &macname . . . | or |&macnames(1) setc 'MCGUFFIN','MCGOFFIN','GUBBINS' | . . . | &macnames(&i) . . . --character value of macro name is already supported by the HLASM. The value of a character set symbol may appear in the operation field where a macro's name usually appears. This suggests that without much trouble the assembler could be induced to support such an idiom as |&macname setc 'gubbins' --character value of macro name |&xmacname setc C2X(&macname) --its hexadecimal value using available BIF | &xmacname . . . This could be routinized, even encapsulated, readily to make it less tedious. It is my uninformed guess that it would also be easy to implement since BPAM would not find it problematic, but John Ehrman or one of the Perth Laboratory people who monitor this list may see insurmountable difficulties in doing so. -- John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA
