Literal-Character Operator (!) 

The literal-character operator (!) preceding a character forces the assembler to treat the character literally without its default special meaning. The syntax is

     !character
Thus, !; is equivalent to <;>. The following example shows an instance where this operator is useful.

Example: Consider the macro defined below.
   range_error2  MACRO   number, variable, range
                   err_msg&number   DB  "&variable: out of range - &range", 0 
                 ENDM
 

We can invoke this in .DATA part as

     range_error2 3, mark, < can!'!'t be !> 100 >
to create the error message
     err_meg3   DB   "mark: out of range - cant''t be > 100", 0

Note that if we didn't use the ! operator in the third argument, the assembler would have interpreted the third argument as < can''t be >.

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