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# Introduction
There are many commonly-used PDP-8 assemblers, several of which we ship with the PiDP-8/I software distribution; there are more available elsewhere. How does a programmer discriminate among them, other than to carefully read their entire manual and then spend several months writing code in each one to develop a feel for what each one is like? They cannot all be equal, else they'd be interchangeable and you'd just pick one based on what was available. One cannot be clearly better for all things, else everyone would just use that.
There are many commonly-used PDP-8 assemblers, several of which we ship with the PiDP-8/I software distribution; there are more available elsewhere. How does a programmer discriminate among them, other than to carefully read each one's manual, then spend several months writing code in it to develop a feel for what it is like? They cannot all be equal, else they'd be interchangeable and you'd just pick one based on what was available. One cannot be clearly better for all things, else everyone would just use that.
This article is a **preliminary** survey of these assemblers with an eye toward listing the key distinctions among them.
When multiple versions are available, our commentary applies to the version currently in the PiDP-8/I software distribution, if present, or the latest available version of the assembler it is hosted externally.
When multiple versions are available, our commentary applies to the version currently in the PiDP-8/I software distribution, if present, or the latest available version of the assembler if it is hosted externally.
## Disqualifying Criteria
## Criteria
This survey is not intended to list every PDP-8 assembler. Our purpose here is to make distinctions among options readily available to end users.
This survey does not include every PDP-8 assembler, on purpose. This is not a comprehensive survey, and it is not a genealogy project. Our purpose here is to list useful options for the practicing PDP-8 assembly language programmer.
Here are the reasons I have chosen not to include some assemblers known to me:
* It is not readily available online.
* It is readily available online.
* It offers a valuable capability to the end user:
* It is the back end assembler for some other language which is itself important.
* It is not required to build an important body of code which is readily available online.
* It is required to build an important body of code which is readily available online.
* It does not fill a gap left by those we do discuss; thus we will not be listing every PAL style assembler.
* It was replaced by one of those we do discuss, and it is not important to discuss that particular predecessor here; this is not a genealogy project.
That list is not intended to be normative or complete, just informative: if an assembler is not listed here and it matches one of the criteria above, that is probably why it is not here.
That list is not intended to be normative or complete, just informative: if an assembler fails to meet all of those criteria, that is likely why it is not listed here.
## Disclaimer
The author is not an expert in this topic, though he has occasionally consulted with experts. The claims in this document are checked against manuals, published example code, and sometimes against running implementations. However, do not expect it to be complete or comprehensive.
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