as: Arguments

1 
1 6.2.1 Arguments
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1 
1 "Arguments" are symbols, numbers or subexpressions.  In other contexts
1 arguments are sometimes called "arithmetic operands".  In this manual,
1 to avoid confusing them with the "instruction operands" of the machine
1 language, we use the term "argument" to refer to parts of expressions
1 only, reserving the word "operand" to refer only to machine instruction
1 operands.
1 
1    Symbols are evaluated to yield {SECTION NNN} where SECTION is one of
1 text, data, bss, absolute, or undefined.  NNN is a signed, 2's
1 complement 32 bit integer.
1 
1    Numbers are usually integers.
1 
1    A number can be a flonum or bignum.  In this case, you are warned
1 that only the low order 32 bits are used, and 'as' pretends these 32
1 bits are an integer.  You may write integer-manipulating instructions
1 that act on exotic constants, compatible with other assemblers.
1 
1    Subexpressions are a left parenthesis '(' followed by an integer
1 expression, followed by a right parenthesis ')'; or a prefix operator
1 followed by an argument.
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