Hmmm... 

"I had a tough time in code review.  Reviewers called me naive for using a 
negative value in a base register.  No, the were ignorant; the code worked and 
was correct." 

Perhaps technically 'correct', in that it worked, but why run the risk of 
having a customer stumble over the eventual bad fruit borne of the seemingly 
enlightened developer decades earlier, but since maintained by lesser souls. 
'Danger Will Robinson! Danger!!!'    

My 2 cents worth. 
Mike 

-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Assembler List [mailto:[email protected]] On 
Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Tuesday, June 2, 2020 5:01 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: z/OS HLASM: EQU for statement labels

Caution! This message was sent from outside your organization.

Not bad.  It's very useful for assembler programmers to understand the math 
behind 2s-complement (and how it nicely "complements" wrap-around
addressing) thoroughly enough to get that; besides understanding you avoided 
changing the CC.

But for the record, that's a negative value in an index register.

sas

On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 4:24 PM Paul Gilmartin < 
[email protected]> wrote:

> On 2020-06-02, at 14:01:28, MELVYN MALTZ wrote:
> >
> > Labels...
> > Even back in the 60's I was taught never to put a label on an 
> > instruction I only break that rule now for the subject of an EX (and 
> > its variants)
> >
> It's safer than
> label    EQU   *
>
> > Returning CC from a subroutine...
> > Have to point out that IBM do this in the VSAM TESTCB macro
> >
> I had one co-worker who insisted on doing that.  He augmented our 
> MVS/XA common return macro to:
>
>          IPM
>          ...
>          SH    R13,=Y(workarea_length)
>          ...
>          SPM   , restore CC
>
> then *I* was tasked with porting to VM/370.  No IPM.  I did:
>          LH   R1,=Y(-workarea_length)
>          LA   R13,0(R1,R13)
>
> I had a tough time in code review.  Reviewers called me naive for 
> using a negative value in a base register.  No, the were ignorant; the 
> code worked and was correct.
>
> -- gil
>

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