Commas in assembler code comments

Problem: I received warning message ASMA431W Continuation statement may be in error - continuation indicator column is blank.

Solution: This warning is generated when the statement operands end with a comma but a continuation character has been omitted. If the operands are to be continued on the next line, add a non-blank continuation character.

If the operands are not to be continued on the next line, it is possible that no operands were specified for the statement and the comma is actually part of the remarks field of the statement.

For example, consider the following code:

MEXIT    EXITC            Exit, without saving

In this statement, no operands are coded; however, there is a comma after the first blank-delimited portion of the remarks. To the assembler, this looks like the operands consist of the string Exit, and the comma indicates that there could be more operands on the next line. Because there is no continuation line, the assembler assumes that the statement is complete; however, it issues a warning message to indicate that you might have forgotten a continuation character, which would affect the generated output.

To correct this, add a comma in the operands field of the macro because the macro has no operands:

MEXIT    EXITC ,          Exit, without saving

With the comma in column 16, the assembler will not treat Exit as an incomplete list of operands and the HLASM warning will not be issued.

If you did not change your code during the migration from TPF 4.1 to the z/TPF system and this warning is appearing for the first time, the FLAG(CONT) option might now be in effect, while earlier assemblies used the FLAG(NOCONT) option. These warnings can be suppressed by using the FLAG(NOCONT) option on the assembly invocation; however, the preferred approach is to correct the code, because this allows you to continue to specify the FLAG(NOCONT) option to detect continuation-type warnings in future code development. If you do not correct the code, either specify the FLAG(NOCONT) option to eliminate the warnings (which also eliminates a useful diagnostic feature of HLASM) or examine the warnings from each assembly to identify any new warnings from among the previous uncorrected warnings (which makes it easy to miss something new). If you use the less desirable FLAG(NOCONT) option, examine the warnings carefully.