It'd look exactly like what's used: a number (since the instruction format doesn't allow for arbitrary-length strings in the instructions). The question isn't what it looks like, but what's done with it: is it used to address memory, or is it used as a name to be looked up to find the address to be used? It's slippery because as I said one common optimization is to arrange it so that the "names" can actually be used to address memory, eliminating the need for the look-up step (eg. the symbol table's implemented as an array, and names are made to be indexes into that table so you can use the CPU's indirect-addressing functionality to do the work for you). You can't tell whether this has been done or not just by looking at the names, because they could both use fixed-size integers for names. You have to look at how they're handled.

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• How Dr. Mitchell is right even if his side is wrong - Authored by: PolR on Tuesday, May 15 2012 @ 04:34 PM EDT
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