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Assembly language Basic elements There is a large degree of diversity in the way the authors of assemblers categorize statements

and in the nomenclature that they use. In particular, some describe anything other than a machine mnemonic or extended mnemonic as a pseudooperation (pseudo-op). A typical assembly language consists of 3 types of instruction statements that are used to define program operations: Opcode mnemonics Data sections Assembly directives Opcode mnemonics and extended mnemonics Instructions (statements) in assembly language are generally very simple, unlike those in high-level language. Generally, a mnemonic is a symbolic name for a single executable machine language instruction (an opcode), and there is at least one opcode mnemonic defined for each machine language instruction. Each instruction typically consists of an operation or opcode plus zero or more operands. Most instructions refer to a single value, or a pair of values. Operands can be immediate (value coded in the instruction itself), registers specified in the instruction or implied, or the addresses of data located elsewhere in storage. This is determined by the underlying processor architecture: the assembler merely reflects how this architecture works. Extended mnemonics are often used to specify a combination of an opcode with a specific operand, e.g., the System/360 assemblers use B as an extended mnemonic for BC with a mask of 15 and NOP for BC with a mask of 0. Extended mnemonics are often used to support specialized uses of instructions, often for purposes not obvious from the instruction name. For example, many CPU's do not have an explicit NOP instruction, but do have instructions that can be used for the purpose. In 8086 CPUs the instruction xchg ax,ax is used for nop, with nop being a pseudo-opcode to encode the instruction xchg ax,ax. Some disassemblers recognize this and will decode the xchg ax,ax instruction as nop. Similarly, IBM assemblers for System/360 and System/370 use the extended mnemonics NOP and NOPR for BC and BCR with zero masks. For the SPARC architecture, these are known as synthetic instructions Some assemblers also support simple built-in macro-instructions that generate two or more machine instructions. For instance, with some Z80 assemblers the instruction ld hl,bc is recognized to generate ld l,c followed by ld h,b.[8] These are sometimes known aspseudo-opcodes. Data sections There are instructions used to define data elements to hold data and variables. They define the type of data, the length and the alignment of data. These instructions can also define whether the data is available to outside programs (programs assembled separately) or only to the program in which the data section is defined. Some assemblers classify these as pseudo-ops. Assembly directives Assembly directives, also called pseudo opcodes, pseudo-operations or pseudo-ops, are instructions that are executed by an assembler at assembly time, not by a CPU at run time. They can make the assembly of the program dependent on parameters input by a programmer, so that one program can be assembled different ways, perhaps for different applications. They also can be used to manipulate presentation of a program to make it easier to read and maintain. (For example, directives would be used to reserve storage areas and optionally their initial contents.) The names of directives often start with a dot to distinguish them from machine instructions. Symbolic assemblers let programmers associate arbitrary names (labels or symbols) with memory locations. Usually, every constant and variable is given a name so instructions can reference those locations by name, thus promoting self

documenting code. In executable code, the name of each subroutine is associated with its entry point, so any calls to a subroutine can use its name. Inside subroutines, GOTO destinations are given labels. Some assemblers support local symbols which are lexically distinct from normal symbols (e.g., the use of "10$" as a GOTO destination). Some assemblers, such as NASM provide flexible symbol management, letting programmers manage different namespaces, automatically calculate offsets within data structures, and assign labels that refer to literal values or the result of simple computations performed by the assembler. Labels can also be used to initialize constants and variables with relocatable addresses. Assembly languages, like most other computer languages, allow comments to be added to assembly source code that are ignored by the assembler. Good use of comments is even more important with assembly code than with higher-level languages, as the meaning and purpose of a sequence of instructions is harder to decipher from the code itself. Wise use of these facilities can greatly simplify the problems of coding and maintaining low-level code. Raw assembly source code as generated by compilers or disassemblerscode without any comments, meaningful symbols, or data definitionsis quite difficult to read when changes must be made.

Basic Elements of Assembly Language There is an element of truth in saying Assembly language is simple. It was designed to run in little memory and consists of mainly low-level, simple operations. Then why does it have the reputation of being difcult to learn? After all, how hard can it be to move data between registers and do a calculation? Heres a proof of concepta simple program in assembly language that adds two numbers and displays the result: main PROC mov eax,5 ; move 5 to the EAX register add eax,6 ; add 6 to the EAX register call WriteInt ; display value in EAX exit ; quit main ENDP We simplied things a bit by calling a library subroutine named WriteInt, which itself contains a fair amount of code. But in general, assembly language is not hard to learn if youre happy writing short programs that do practically nothing. Details, Details Becoming a skilled assembly language programmer requires a love of details. Build a foundation of basic information and gradually ll in the details until you have something solid. Chapter 1 introduced number concepts and virtual machines. Chapter 2 introduced hardware basics. Now youre ready to begin programming. If you were a cook, we would show you around the kitchen and explain how to use mixers, grinders, knives, stoves, and saucepans. Similarly, we will identify the ingredients of assembly language, mix them together, and cook up a few tasty programs. Integer Constants An integer constant (or integer literal) is made up of an optional leading sign, one or more digits, and an optional sufx character (called a radix) indicating the numbers base: [{+ | }] digits [radix]

Radix may be one of the following (uppercase or lowercase):If no radix is given, the integer constant is assumed to be decimal. Here are some examples using different radixes: A hexadecimal constant beginning with a letter must have a leading zero to prevent the assembler from interpreting it as an identier. Integer Expressions An integer expression is a mathematical expression involving integer values and arithmetic operators. The expression must evaluate to an integer, which can be stored in 32 bits (0 through FFFFFFFFh). The arithmetic operators are listed in Table 3-1 according to their precedence order, from highest (1) to lowest (4). Real Number Constants Real number constants are represented as decimal reals or encoded (hexadecimal) reals. A decimal real contains an optional sign followed by an integer, a decimal point, an optional integer that expresses a fraction, and an optional exponent: [sign]integer.[integer][exponent] Following are the syntax for the sign and exponent: sign {+,-} exponent [{+,-}]integer Following are examples of valid real number constants: 2. +3.0 -44.2E+05 26.E5 At least one digit and a decimal point are required. Character Constants A character constant is a single character enclosed in single or double quotes. MASM stores the value in memory as the characters binary ASCII code. Examples are 'A' "d" A complete list of ASCII codes is printed on the inside back cover of this book String Constants A string constant is a sequence of characters (including spaces) enclosed in single or double quotes: 'ABC' 'X' "Goodnight, Gracie"

'4096' Embedded quotes are permitted when used in the manner shown by the following examples: "This isn't a test" 'Say "Goodnight," Gracie' Reserved Words Reserved words have special meaning in MASM and can only be used in their correct context. There are different types of reserved words: Instruction mnemonics, such as MOV, ADD, and MUL. Directives, which tell MASM how to assemble programs. Attributes, which provide size and usage information for variables and operands. Examples are BYTE and WORD. Operators, used in constant expressions. Predened symbols, such as @data, which return constant integer values at assembly time. A complete list of MASM reserved words can be found in Appendix A. Identiers An identier is a programmer-chosen name. It might identify a variable, a constant, a procedure, or a code label. Keep the following in mind when creating identiers: They may contain between 1 and 247 characters. They are not case sensitive. The rst character must be a letter (A..Z, a..z), underscore (_), @ , ?, or $. Subsequent characters may also be digits. An identier cannot be the same as an assembler reserved word. Directives A directive is a command embedded in the source code that is recognized and acted upon by the assembler. Directives do not execute at run time, whereas instructions do. Directives can dene variables, macros, and procedures. They can assign names to memory segments and perform many other housekeeping tasks related to the assembler. In MASM, directives are case insensitive. It recognizes .data, .DATA, and .Data as equivalent. The following example helps to show that directives do not execute at run time. The DWORD directive tells the assembler to reserve space in the program for a doubleword variable. The MOV instruction executes at run time, copying the contents of myVar to the EAX register: myVar DWORD 26 ; DWORD directive mov eax,myVar ; MOV instruction Each assembler has a different set of directives. TASM (Borland) and NASM (Netwide Assembler), for example, share a common subset of directives with MASM. The GNU assembler, on the other hand, has almost no directives in common with MASM. Dening Segments One important function of assembler directives is to dene program sections, or segments. The .DATA directive identies the area of a program containing variables: .data The .CODE directive identies the area of a program containing instructions:

.code The .STACK directive identies the area of a program holding the runtime stack, setting its size: .stack 100h Appendix A is a useful reference for MASM directives and operators. Instructions An instruction is a statement that becomes executable when a program is assembled. Instructions are translated by the assembler into machine language bytes, which are loaded and executed by the CPU at run time. An instruction contains four basic parts: Label (optional) Instruction mnemonic (required) Operand(s) (usually required) Comment (optional) This is the basic syntax: [label:] mnemonic operand(s) [;comment] Lets explore each part separately, beginning with the label eld.

Comments Comments are an important way for the writer of a program to communicate information about how the program works to a person reading the source code. The following information is typically included at the top of a program listing: Description of the programs purpose Names of persons who created and/or revised the program Program creation and revision dates Technical notes about the programs implementation Comments can be specied in two ways: Single-line comments, beginning with a semicolon character (;). All characters following the semicolon on the same line are ignored by the assembler. Block comments, beginning with the COMMENT directive and a user-specied symbol. All subsequent lines of text are ignored by the assembler until the same user-specied symbol appears. For example, COMMENT ! This line is a comment. This line is also a comment. !

We can also use any other symbol: COMMENT & This line is a comment. This line is also a comment. &

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