MIPS registers symbolic naming

[Ian Lance Taylor]

Ryan Underwood <nemesis-lists@icequake.net> writes:

> I noticed when using gas to assemble a mips program, that the symbolic
> register names ($a0, $t0, $v0, etc) are not accepted, only numeric ones
> are.  Does anyone know if there is a reason for this, beyond "nobody has
> implemented that yet" ?  I notice an option in gcc for mips to use
> symbolic names (-rnames), but it makes a point to mention that gas will
> not assemble such a file.

This is traditional behaviour for MIPS assemblers.

Most people who want other behaviour use a header file to define the
names.  For example, see newlib/libc/machine/mips/machine/regdef.h.

I wouldn't object to a -mregnames option along the lines of the PPC
one.

Ian