# Data allocation (ivss)

**Data allocation** emits initialized bytes or reserves zero-filled space in the current section. ivss supports several widths and a string directive:

```asm
.section my_data
    .byte 0x41
    .half 0x1234
    .word 0x11223344
    .skip 3
    .ascii "Hi"
```

The resulting bytes are:

```text
41 34 12 44 33 22 11 00 00 00 48 69 00
```

For numeric literals, `.byte`, `.half`, and `.word` emit one, two, and four bytes respectively. Multi-byte data is little-endian, placing the least significant byte first. `.skip 3` appends three zero bytes.

The string helper used by `.ascii` appends a terminating zero, so `"Hi"` occupies three bytes in this implementation. Do not infer its behavior from assemblers where `.ascii` excludes that terminator.

The directives append without automatically padding this layout for alignment. Labels can name any of these offsets for later access. Symbol-valued data operands additionally involve relocation; the example uses numeric literals so each displayed byte is determined during assembly.

Source: [asembler.c](https://github.com/yanevskiv/ivss/blob/main/src/asembler.c), [elf.c](https://github.com/yanevskiv/ivss/blob/main/src/elf.c).