3 ms·

You could save one byte by replacing "0=" with "0<>" (well, except for the name, maybe use "0#"?): pop ax neg ax ;sets carry flag if nonzero sb

You could save one byte by replacing "0=" with "0<>" (well, except for the name, maybe use "0#"?): pop ax neg ax ;sets carry flag if nonzero sbb ax,ax push ax And another two bytes in DOCOL: ;add ax,4 ;mov si,ax xchg ax,si lodsw lodsw Maybe even free up a word register to always hold the address of DOCOL, then you only need two bytes at each colon definition. If it's possible without adding any extra instructions, this should save 4 bytes in total (one stosw in COLON, the DOCOL.addr variable, one lodsw in the above version of DOCOL)

fuzzballcat 3y ago
Good thinking! I wouldn't have thought of that `xchg` one in DOCOL, very clever. I'll futz around with making DOCOL's address as a register and see if I can make that work, though I don't know if that will work since I think some of the mechanisms in place have additional functions. EDIT: So, I don't think this will work. I'd be using `dx` to store DOCOL's address, but this appears to get clobbered somewhere, fixing which would outweigh the 1 byte benefit you end up actually getting. I'll keep thinking about it though!