DOCERR: ALIAS Directive Undocumented in MASM 6.0 (87932)

SUMMARY

In the online Help and on page 618 of the "Microsoft Macro Assembler Programmer's Guide" for MASM versions 6.0, 6.0a, and 6.0b, the ALIAS keyword is listed as a word that is reserved for future use. While the feature was actually implemented in the assembler, it was not documented as such.

The ALIAS directive was not documented because Microsoft recommends using LINK 5.3 or later and LIB 3.2 or later when producing .EXEs, .DLLs, or library modules that use this directive. These utilities did not ship until Microsoft C/C++ 7.0; therefore, because the tools were not available at the time that MASM 6.0 shipped, the directive was not documented.

MORE INFORMATION

This feature is useful to map names used in one version of a product to names used in another version of that product when they have changed. The library OLDNAMES.LIB that ships with Microsoft C/C++ version 7.0 was created to map C 6.0 names to C/C++ 7.0 names and uses this technology.

The syntax for the ALIAS directive is as follows

ALIAS <alias> = <actual-name>

where the angle brackets are required, alias is the alternate or alias name, and actual-name is the actual name of the function or procedure. Note that the new utilities, LINK 5.3 and LIB 3.2, should be used.