From: der Mouse <mouse@Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>

>DEC syntax for this would be "MOVAL 0xff, @0x10000000".

Nitpick:  it's been a while, but IIRC doesn't MACRO-32 use ^X not 0x right?
It always felt to me like if anything DEC is trying to make MACRO operands
look like FORTRAN, not C (not that FORTRAN has ^X either, but, um, whatever).

>DEC uses @ and #, but
>Unices have traditionally used * and $.

Isn't there some crazy explanation for this, involving @ and # being used
as editing keys in extremely early Unix TTY drivers, so we're stuck with this
weird syntax forever in all architectures, just to support ancient terminals
with no CTRL key (like what?!  even the ASR33 could send all the usual codes).

John Wilson
D Bit