#### 8.20.1 M88K Machine Directives

The M88K version of the assembler supports the following machine directives:

`.align`
  This directive aligns the section program counter on the next 4-byte boundary.

`.dfloat` expr
  This assembles a double precision (64-bit) floating point constant.

`.ffloat` expr
  This assembles a single precision (32-bit) floating point constant.

`.half` expr
  This directive assembles a half-word (16-bit) constant.

`.word` expr
  This assembles a word (32-bit) constant.

`.string "` str `"`
  This directive behaves like the standard `.ascii` directive for copying str into the object file. The string is not terminated with a null byte.

`.set` symbol `,` value
  This directive creates a symbol named symbol which is an alias for another symbol (possibly not yet defined). This should not be confused with the mnemonic `set`, which is a legitimate M88K instruction.

`.def` symbol `,` value
  This directive is synonymous with `.set` and is presumably provided for compatibility with other M88K assemblers.

`.bss` symbol `,` length `,` align
  Reserve length bytes in the bss section for a local symbol, aligned to the power of two specified by align. length and align must be positive absolute expressions. This directive differs from .lcomm only in that it permits you to specify an alignment. See `.lcomm` .