Assembler Directives - DS

DS - The Define Storage directive reserves the specified amount of memory at the current location. DS is qualified by .B, .W, or .L and defaults to .W if no size is specified. Unlike DC, no data is stored in the reserved memory. The assembler will force DS.W and DS.L locations to start in even memory addresses. DS.W 0 may be used to force even word alignment.

Usage:
[label] DS[.size]  n

TABLE  DS.W  256      Reserve 256 words for TABLE
flags  DS.B  5        Reserve 5 bytes
       DS.W  0        Force even word alignment for the following code

Note! The ORG directive may also be used to force Word or Long Word alignment.

       ORG   (*+1)&-2  Force Word alignment

       ORG   (*+3)&-4  Force Long Word alignment