Directive (programming)

Directive (programming)

In computer programming, the term directive is applied in a variety of ways that are similar to the term command. It is also used to describe some programming language constructs (e.g. those specifying how a compiler or assembler should process its input).

To distinguish a directive from a command or statement, a directive may involve a pre or post processing command or macro. Its second use involves a statement that affects local or more global options or that applies to a block of programming code but by itself does not perform any action.

This term could be used to refer to proprietary third party tags and commands (or markup) embedded in code or comments that result in additional executable processing that extend the existent compiler, assembler and language constructs present in the development environment.