Intelligent macro-matching, VS icon nicking

Thursday, 22nd December 2005

Brass has got a new macro preprocessor, that hopefully makes the work of people writing things like the macro-driven TI ASM API easier, and will generate less redundant code.
TASM only supports simple find-and-replace macros; so, for example:

#define draw_sprite(x,y,sprite) ld a,x\ ld b,y\ ld hl,sprite\ call put_sprite

draw_sprite(10,43,my_sprite)
; Generates the following:
 ld a,10
 ld b,43
 ld hl,my_sprite
 call put_sprite

draw_sprite(a,43,hl)
; Generates the following:
 ld a,a ; Rubbish!
 ld b,43
 ld hl,hl ; Not going to work...
 call put_sprite

Brass, however, supports more intelligent macros - like this example shows. It will switch between a variety of different macros, depending on the arguments passed in.

Latenite is still in development - nothing particularily visible, barring the new tooltips and worrying familiar icons.