Long Branches

[Raman Renu]

   I have a problem in using the C compiler and VAX assembler in our local
4.3BSD(VAX) site.  I have a program which has a huge(>900lines) switch
statement.

       /*   Whoever said that programmers(pro) don't use case/switch */

The assembler chokes on (>32K long) long branches.  Apparently
there is a flag "-J" for such purposes (in the assembler)
which does not seem to work.

The man page for "as" lists under Bugs
---------------
BUGS
     -J should be eliminated; the assembler should automatically
     choose among byte, word and long branches.
_______________

That does not seem to work either.

The ouput of the C compiler was 
___________________________
Assembler:
"/tmp/ctm088343", line 2565: brw: Branch too far(50148b): try -J flag
"/tmp/ctm088343", line 2823: brw: Branch too far(48806b): try -J flag
"/tmp/ctm088343", line 2922: brw: Branch too far(48313b): try -J flag
"/tmp/ctm088343", line 12658: Case will branch too far
"/tmp/ctm088343", line 12659: Case will branch too far
"/tmp/ctm088343", line 12664: Case will branch too far
__________________________

and the ouput of a seperate assembly had the same error message(predictably). 

Assembler:
"prolog.s", line 13337: Case will branch too far
"prolog.s", line 13338: Case will branch too far
"prolog.s", line 13339: Case will branch too far
"prolog.s", line 13340: Case will branch too far


         This piece of code did compile in a Gould machine but not on the 
Vax (Code is portable).  Could somebody explain and help me solve this 
problem.



                                             Renu Raman
                                           ...ihnp4!nucsrl!ram
                                          Northwestern Univ. Comp. Sci. Lab.
                                          Evanston  IL  60201