Syntax Rules

The syntax rules in this section apply to all statements in a module-definition file. Other rules specific to each statement are described in the sections that follow.

Statement and attribute keywords are not case sensitive. User-specified identifiers are case insensitive by default; however, they can be made case sensitive by using LINK's (or IMPLIB's) /NOI option.

Use one or more spaces, tabs, or newline characters to separate a statement keyword from its arguments and to separate statements from each other. A colon (:) or equal sign (=) that designates an argument is surrounded by zero or more spaces, tabs, or newline characters.

A NAME or LIBRARY statement, if used, must precede all other statements.

Most statements appear at most once in a file and accept one specification of parameters and attributes. The specification follows the statement keyword on the same or subsequent line(s). If the statement is repeated with a different specification later in the file, the later statement overrides the earlier one.

The INCLUDE statement can appear more than once in the file. Each statement takes one filename specification.

The SEGMENTS, EXPORTS, IMPORTS, and FUNCTIONS statements can appear more than once in the file. Each statement can take multiple specifications, which must be separated by one or more spaces, tabs, or newline characters. The statement keyword must appear once before the first specification and can be repeated before each additional specification.

Comments in the file are designated by a semicolon (;) at the beginning of each comment line. A comment cannot share a line with part or all of a statement, but it can appear between lines of a multiline statement.

Numeric arguments can be specified in decimal or in C-language notation.

If a string argument matches a reserved word it must be enclosed in double quotation marks (").

Example

The following module-definition file gives a description for a DLL. This sample file includes one comment and five statements.

; Sample module-definition file

LIBRARY FIRSTLIB WINDOWAPI

EXETYPE WINDOWS 3.0

CODE PRELOAD MOVABLE DISCARDABLE

DATA PRELOAD SINGLE

HEAPSIZE 1024