The assembler reduces paired terms to single absolute terms in the intermediate stages of evaluation. The assembler considers relocatable terms as paired under the following conditions:

• The paired terms must have the same relocatability attribute.
• The paired terms must have opposite signs after all unary operators are resolved. In an expression, the paired terms do not have to be contiguous (that is, other terms can come between the paired terms).

The following examples show absolute expressions. A is an absolute term; X and Y are relocatable terms with the same relocatability:

A-Y+X
A
A*A
X-Y+A
(*+*)-(*+*)
*-*

A reference to the location counter must be paired with another relocatable term from the same control section; that is, with the same relocatability. For example:

*-Y