ARM Initialization and Layout Directives

9/7/2007

The AREA directive instructs the assembler to assemble a new code or data sections, used in an expression of the following form:

AREA sectionname{,attr}{,attr}...

The AREA sectionname expression is modified by one or more comma-delimited attributes.

The following table shows the valid attributes for an AREA directive.

Attribute	Description
ALIGN	Defines the section boundary, where the section is aligned on a 2^expression -byte boundary. expression can have any integer value from 0 to 31. Do not use `ALIGN=0` or `ALIGN=1` for code sections. Note that the `ALIGN` attribute is not the same as the `ALIGN` directive.
CODE	Contains machine instructions. `READONLY` is the default.
DATA	Contains data, not instructions. `READWRITE` is the default.
NOINIT	Indicates that the data section is uninitialized, or initialized to zero. It contains only space reservation directives `SPACE or DCB, DCD< DCDU, DCQ, DCQU, or DCWU` with initialized values of zero.
READONLY	Indicates that this section should not be written to. This is the default for `CODE` areas.
READWRITE	Indicates that this section can be read from and written to. This is the default for `DATA` areas.

See Also