FIX: Parentheses Necessary for Operator Precedence

 Last reviewed: September 11, 1997
Article ID: Q39443
5.10 | 5.10 MS-DOS | OS/2 kbtool kbfixlist kbbuglist

The information in this article applies to:

  • Microsoft Macro Assembler for MS-DOS and OS/2, version 5.1

SYMPTOMS

Using Microsoft Macro Assembler (MASM) version 5.1, You may be able to correct "Illegal size for operand" errors by careful use of parentheses.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in MASM version 5.1. This problem was corrected in MASM version 5.1a.

MORE INFORMATION

The following code demonstrates warnings, errors, and their solution:

dosseg .model small,c .data

.code myproc PROC buffer:FAR PTR BYTE 

           mov     bx, WORD PTR buffer[0]
           mov     ds, WORD PTR buffer[2]
; MASM gives an operand-size error. This is a precedence problem that ; you can correct with parentheses: 

           mov     bx, WORD PTR (buffer[0])
           mov     ds, WORD PTR (buffer[2])
myproc ENDP

end ...................................................................... masm test,,,; Microsoft (R) Macro Assembler Version 5.10 Copyright (C) Microsoft Corp 1981, 1988. All rights reserved.

test.ASM(9): warning A4057: Illegal size for operand test.ASM(10): error A2057: Illegal size for operand 

  23666 Bytes symbol space free

      1 Warning Errors
      1 Severe  Errors
.......................................................................

Additional reference words: 5.10 buglist5.10 fixlist5.10a
KBCategory: kbtool kbfixlist kbbuglist
KBSubCategory: MLIss
Solution Type : kbfix

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Last reviewed: September 11, 1997
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