When coding source statements, you need to be aware of what characters are acceptable to the assembler, and how the assembler interprets them. The following numbers and characters are accepted by the assembler: o The letters of the alphabet, A to Z, uppercase and lowercase. By default, the assembler converts all lowercase letters to uppercase. This means it considers lowercase letters equivalent to uppercase letters. The assembler can operate in a case-sensitive mode. In case- sensitive mode, the assembler does not convert lowercase letters to uppercase letters. On OpenVMS and OpenVMS Alpha systems, you can select case-sensitive mode from the command line with the /NAMES=AS_IS qualifier. o The digits 0 to 9. o The special characters listed in the Special Characters Table which follows. Table 2 Special Characters Used in MACRO-64 Statements Character CharactName Function _ Underscore Character in symbol names. $ Dollar Character in symbol names. sign . Period Character in symbol names, current location counter, and decimal point. : Colon Local label terminator. :: Double Global label terminator. colon sign keyword argument terminator. equal sign # Number Literal value indicator. sign @ At sign Arithmetic shift operator. ; Semicolon Comment field indicator. + Plus Unary plus operator and arithmetic addition sign operator. - Minus Unary minus operator, arithmetic subtraction sign or operator, and line continuation indicator. hyphen * Asterisk Arithmetic multiplication operator. / Slash Arithmetic division operator. & Ampersand Logical AND operator. ! ExclamationLogical inclusive OR operator. point \ Backslash Logical exclusive OR and numeric conversion indicator in macro arguments. ^ Circumflex Unary operators and macro argument delimiter. ( ) ParenthesesDisplacement and register field delimiter in an instruction operand. Argument delimiter to a lexical operator. <> Angle Argument or expression grouping delimiters. brackets ? Question Created local label indicator in macro mark arguments. ' Apostrophe Macro argument concatenation indicator. " Double Quoted literal delimiter. quote % Percent Delimits the beginning of a lexical sign operator. (space)Space or Separates source statement fields. Spaces tab within expressions are otherwise ignored. (tab) , Comma Separates symbolic arguments within the operand field. Multiple expressions in the operand field must be separated by commas.