Article ID: 137174
Article Last Modified on 11/19/2003
APPLIES TO
- Microsoft Macro Assembler 6.11 Standard Edition
This article was previously published under Q137174
SUMMARY
MASM returns an A2041 error (String or Text literal too long) when passing to a MACRO a set of parameters whose total length is greater than 255 bytes. The inidvidual parameters may be shorter than the stated 255 byte maximum, but the MACRO expansion treats the entire parameter list as a single string (text literal).
MORE INFORMATION
This behavior is by design, though it is not currently documented as such. The following code demonstrates this behavior:
.486
.486
.MODEL FLAT
.CODE
menu_list macro item1,item2,item3,item4,item5,item6,item7
endm
menu_list <'ACTION1','ACTION1','ACTION1','ACTION1'>,\
<'ACTION2','ACTION2','ACTION2','ACTION2'>,\
<'ACTION3','ACTION3','ACTION3','ACTION3'>,\
<'ACTION4','ACTION4','ACTION4','ACTION4'>,\
<'ACTION5','ACTION5','ACTION5','ACTION5'>,\
<'ACTION6','ACTION6','ACTION6','ACTION6'>,\
<'ACTION7','ACTION7','ACTION7','ACTION7'>
end
This is the message MASM returns upon compiling this sample:
Additional query words: 6.11
Keywords: KB137174
