I fully agree with vid's point of view.

I don't wanted to invent new formats... Is it possible (of course it's possible) to allow to use directive below?

this kind of directive also has its own sense IMHO

Yeah, such directive would help to get an exact output that was desired.

But this sense is a bit ambiguous. What when someone specified both "with" setting and output file name from command line?

Well, in this case you may do as follows: if 'with' not specified - then 'output' is obligatory, otherwise 'with' overrides 'output'

In my opinion in no case 'output' should be overridden.

I agree with Privalov
Why will one specify output extension if "format with '.bin'" is already present?
IMHO, to specially override formatter directuive
Why else type extra symbols

As I understand pelaillo's idea, this feature should be used to make things easier in general cases, so format-PE.asm file will become .EXE with a doubleclick from explorer.
If one wants .OCX or .SPECIAL there's no problem to compile source in current manner - anyway we are doing that now

Maybe vice versa? If 'output' specified - it overrides 'with'...

mike: this will be another confusing thing about compiler, which is wanted to be as simple as possible.
Wouldn't it be interesting if "fasm a.asm a.bin" will create "a.out" file? (because "out" will be specified with "with" operator).
Also, what if "with" nor "output" is specified? Quessing, just like it would be without "with". I think my way (if possible) is most simple, altough not so general, but this isn't feature which will be used by so many people (i think).

Look, now 'output' isn't optional, right? You may continue to use it but someday I'll make it optional and suggest you: use 'output' or use 'with' or use both, but one of them MUST present, otherwise compiler will raise an error saying "output not specified" (of course, if it can't GUESS an appropriate extension). And, of course, it will be backward compatible (as scientica noticed above) 'cause noone canceled 'output'. What you'll do?

Current guessing mechanism suits me, but I'm working in Windows and extensions I need are only '.exe', '.dll' & '.com'. I don't need '.obj' & others for now. Also, I'm working in MenuetOS with ported FASM outputting Menuet executables without extension. But if I want to write some Menuet app in Windows I need to rename for example 'mfar.com' to 'mfar'. I think it would be more convenient to add format with '' line once and easily code MFAR without mentioned inconvenience.

Regards, Mike.

why not just:
/format [.]* append '.ext'/
or in words:


which simply appends the string to the file, and it overrides the the ".exe" for PE. And for com files:

and for flat files:

(yup nothing - or "format '.whatever' if you want a input.whatever;))

or if the "format com" is better then, the "org 100h" is automatically assumed at start of file - thus there would be two ways to make .com's, just like PE's one "convenient" and one "raw" (thouhg the "raw" means just one more line for com ) - this would strip some confustion with some .com having "format com" and not - and it would be backwards compatible (IMO _importat_ ) - old code will still compile the same!