Literals

A literal is constant data that is assembled as part of the compiled program. Literals must be made for large integers, all floats, and most strings.

There are three programs that make literals; each is called with a literal value and a label number:

• first do label = nextlabel++;
• makeilit(i,label) : integer (not needed for x86)
• makeflit(f,label) : float
• makeblit(s,label) : byte (string)

A literal is accessed relative to the Instruction Pointer:

   movsd   .LC4(%rip),%xmml

Literals are saved in tables and output at the end of the program.

        .align  8
.LC4:
        .long   0   # little-endian on X86
        .long   1078001664