Documentation for COLONS.COM as of 05/06/84


So you have M80 but not MAC, but that huge .ASM file gives you headaches
because none of the labels has a colon, or all those EQUs have colons?
Until today, the only thing you could do was to carefully edit the file and
insert the needed colons or delete the unwanted ones. But now, the agony is
over, COLONS.COM is here!

COLONS.COM will place colons after every label, and strip colons from EQUs
if necessary. Automatically. Simply enter the command COLONS, and answer the
program's requests for input- and output filenames. COLONS.COM will display
the file as it is processed, but without tab expansion.

PECULIARITIES:

COLONS.COM is not very intelligent. If the output file you specify exists,
you will have a chance to change your mind. it is entirely possible to
specify the output file to be the same as the input file. If you then tell
COLONS that you really mean it, the program will go ahead and annihilate
your input file for good and it will probably crash or hang or catch fire.
In other words, the output filename MUST be different from the input file
name, but that's your responsibility.

When processing a program, COLONS does the following:

1. If the first character of a line is a SEMICOLON, the line is
   copied without change.
2. If the first character is an ASTERISK, that asterisk is changed to
   a SEMICOLON and the remainder of the line is copied.
3. If the first character is a non-printable character (SPACE or lower),
   the line is copied unchanged.
4. If the first character is a printable character, it is assumed that
   it is the start of a LABEL. The line is copied to the first non-printable
   character. If a COLON is encountered during copying, the remainder of
   the line is immediately copied. Otherwise, a colon is inserted. If the
   first non-printing character after the label is a SPACE, it is discarded.
   If it is a TAB, it is copied.
5. If the word "EQU" or "equ" is contained anywhere in the line, delimited
   by any non-printing character (SPACE or below), AND IF the first PRINTABLE
   character preceeding that EQU is a colon, that colon is replaced with
   a TAB character or simply removed depending on whether the colon is a
   delimiter or not.
6. If the word "EQU" or "equ" is contained inside a label, that line is
   copied without modifications!

Example:

Before:
************************
; test: equ something
;
bdos:	equ	5
longeqts:equ	6
onequs:	equ	0
;
begin	jmp	done
 mvi a,7
dad	d
done	jmp	0
	end

After:
;***********************
; test	 equ something
;
bdos	equ	5
longeqts	equ	6
onequs:	equ	0
;
begin:	jmp	done
 mvi a,7
dad:	d
done:	jmp	0
	end

As you can see, bad file format results in bad conversion (COLONS can't
tell whether the "dad" above is an instruction or a label; since it begins
in column 0, COLONS assumes it is a label!