ID Number: Q30379
5.10 5.10a
MS-DOS
buglist5.10 buglist5.10a fixlist6.00
Summary:
Variable names in the assembler can begin with the following
character:
'.'
Structure references use the character '.' as an add operator. This
means the label '.cat' is different than the element 'cat' in a
structure. The assembler can become confused distinguishing the two
uses in a program, and can generate the following error message:
Error A2028: Operator expected' occurs on 'mov ax,duck.cat'
Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem with MASM versions 5.1
and 5.1a. This problem was corrected in MASM version 6.0.
More Information:
Sample Code
-----------
.MODEL SMALL
mouse struc
cat dw 1
dog dw 2
mouse ends
.DATA
duck mouse <>
.CODE
start: mov ax,@data
mov ds,ax
.cat dw 4
mov ax,duck.cat
END start