as: Line

1 
1 7.51 '.line LINE-NUMBER'
1 ========================
1 
1 Change the logical line number.  LINE-NUMBER must be an absolute
1 expression.  The next line has that logical line number.  Therefore any
1 other statements on the current line (after a statement separator
1 character) are reported as on logical line number LINE-NUMBER - 1.  One
1 day 'as' will no longer support this directive: it is recognized only
1 for compatibility with existing assembler programs.
1 
1    Even though this is a directive associated with the 'a.out' or
1 'b.out' object-code formats, 'as' still recognizes it when producing
1 COFF output, and treats '.line' as though it were the COFF '.ln' _if_ it
1 is found outside a '.def'/'.endef' pair.
1 
1    Inside a '.def', '.line' is, instead, one of the directives used by
1 compilers to generate auxiliary symbol information for debugging.
1