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→General Format
== General Format ==
Machine code consists of a series of instructions, each of which specifies an operation and zero or more arguments. Each argument may indicate a [[Registerregister]], a [[Memory Address|memory address]], or an [[Immediate Value|immediate value]].
Many early computers encoded the [[Operation|operation]] and [[Addressing Mode|addressing mode]] as a distinct [[Byte|byte]] or [[Word|word]] called an [[OpCode|opcode]], followed by zero or more additional bytes for the arguments, where the number of additional bytes is implied by the opcode.
