Gil again: >Do I remember correctly that it used to? Assembler VS? >Assembler H?
Correct; all predecessors of HLASM, and HLASM before R3. >I was told back then that (part of) the >nominal value was used if padding was necessary for >alignment? The nominal value has no effect on padding. >What does HLASM do in this case: Leave the >padding bytes undefined, as DC would do? Pad with >an assembler-selected pattern? Other (but what)? The rule is that if a DC needs padding and any nonzero bytes were generated prior to the DC, pad with binary zeros. If a DS needs padding, or if the DC was not preceded by nonzero bytes, leave a gap. (This always starts a new object module record.) >If the programmer specifies the (optional) nominal value, >will that be used as the padding pattern? No. Padding within constants depends on programmer coding; but padding of skipped bytes does not. John Ehrman
