Syntax

               .bytevalue₁[, ... , value_n ]

              .ubytevalue₁[, ... , value_n ]

              .charvalue₁[, ... , value_n ]

              .ucharvalue₁[, ... , value_n ]

Description

The .byte, .ubyte, .char, and .uchar directives place one or more values into consecutive words of the current section. Each byte is placed in a word by itself; the eight MSBs are filled with 0s. A value can be one of the following:

• An expression that the assembler evaluates and treats as an 8-bit signed number
• A character string enclosed in double quotes. Each character in a string represents a separate value, and values are stored in consecutive bytes. The entire string must be enclosed in quotes.

Values are not packed or sign-extended; each byte occupies the eight least significant bits of a full 16-bit word. The assembler truncates values greater than eight bits.

If you use a label, it points to the location of the first byte that is initialized.

When you use these directives in a .struct/.endstruct sequence, they define a member's size; they do not initialize memory. For more information, see the .struct/.endstruct/.tag topic.

Example

In this example, 8-bit values (10, -1, abc, and a) are placed into consecutive words in memory. The label STRX has the value 100h, which is the location of the first initialized word.

       1 000000               .space   100h * 16
       2 000100 000A STRX     .byte    10, -1, "abc", 'a'
         000101 00FF 
         000102 0061 
         000103 0062 
         000104 0063 
         000105 0061  
       3 000106 000A          .char   10, -1, "abc", 'a'
         000107 00FF 
         000108 0061 
         000109 0062 
         00010a 0063 
         00010b 0061