7 ms·

Neat! I've also had pretty good luck with nasm on several platforms, including Windows, Linux, OS X, and DOS. fasm also looks pretty neat, but I haven't done

Neat! I've also had pretty good luck with nasm on several platforms, including Windows, Linux, OS X, and DOS. fasm also looks pretty neat, but I haven't done much with it aside from a few toys for Menuet OS. And then there's yasm, which I haven't used, but must be fairly popular given its inclusion in several distros. There's GNU as (gas), which I've used quite a bit, but wouldn't really recommend because it uses strange "AT&T" syntax rather than the syntax you'll find in the Intel manuals. gas is also meant more as part of the GCC pipeline than as a standalone assembler, so even though it can function as one, it's not necessarily nice as one. I've been meaning to play around with the LLVM assembly language. It looks neat, with the bonus of being reasonably portable, but I haven't yet found the time. HLA (High Level Assembly) by Randall Hyde seems like an interesting way to slowly lower yourself into assembly language programming, but that's not how I cut my teeth, so I can't speak to its effectiveness.

Annatar 11y ago
> There's GNU as (gas), which I've used quite a bit, but wouldn't really recommend because it uses strange "AT&T" syntax All AT & T syntax is, is move src, dst rather than intel's move into dst, src as far as I know, intel is the only company which did that, and to me, it is intuitive to move something somewhere, rather than to somewhere move something.
- Narishma 11y ago
  I think most popular assemblers use dst,src not just Intel. I know z80, 68k, PPC and ARM do at least.
  - Annatar 11y ago
    PPC and Motorola 680## series, as well as (Ultra)SPARC all use src, dst.
- pjmlp 11y ago
  Intel's syntax is most common, not the AT&T one. You only see it everywhere nowadays thanks to the rise of GNU/Linux and other open source UNIXes. If you translate mov into =, the syntax makes much more sense than AT&T. I mean mov dst, src is similar to dst = src
  - wolfgke 11y ago
    > Intel's syntax is most common, not the AT&T one. I'd be a little bit more careful with such a statement: Under Windows (and formerly DOS) Intel syntax is the common one, while under GNU/Linux and OSX the AT&T one is used. > If you translate mov into =, the syntax makes much more sense than AT&T. Though I prefer the Intel syntax, I'd be careful with "makes sense" here: According to http://stackoverflow.com/a/4119217/497193 http://stackoverflow.com/a/4119217/497193 people who grew up with MIPS seem to prefer the AT&T syntax since it is much more similar to MIPS assembler.
    - pjmlp 11y ago
      Apparently you missed my second paragraph. Only UNIX based OSes follow AT&T, for obvious reasons.
      - Annatar 11y ago
        It has nothing to do with the operating system. AT & T syntax follows the same style as pretty much any other computer and processor in existence. (Exceptions exist, but they are exotic oddities.)
  - Annatar 11y ago
    > Intel's syntax is most common, not the AT&T one. No, intel is an exception, not the norm. Amstrad, Atari, Commodore 64, Amiga, Sun (both Motorola and (Ultra)SPARC) all use "move src, dst", $ or 0x... only intel diverges from the norm.
- wolfgke 11y ago
  There are much more differences (sources: http://www.imada.sdu.dk/Courses/DM18/Litteratur/IntelnATT.htm http://www.imada.sdu.dk/Courses/DM18/Litteratur/IntelnATT.ht..., http://stackoverflow.com/a/9951916/497193 http://stackoverflow.com/a/9951916/497193) In Intel syntax instructions are not suffixed. In AT&T there is a suffix (q, d, w, b) depending on the operand size. For example (assuming 32 bit register) mov (Intel) gets movl (AT&T). Also the argument order is changed. Constants have to be prefixed by $. Hexadecimal values are prefixed with 0x instead of suffixed with h. Registers are prefixed with %. With this we already have mov eax,1 mov ebx,0ffh vs. movl $1,%eax movl $0xff,%ebx But also the notation for accessing memory is different: For encoding the SIB (Scaled Index Byte) (+ disp[lacement], if desired), Intel uses [base+disp+index * scale], while AT&T uses disp(%base, %index, scale). Thus we have mov edx, [ecx] mov eax, [ebp-4] mov eax, [ebp-4+edx*4] lea eax, [eax*4+8] lea eax, [eax*2+eax] vs. movl (%ecx), %edx movl -4(%ebp), %eax movl -4(%ebp, %edx, 4), %eax leal 8(,%eax,4), %eax leal (%eax,%eax,2), %eax Edit: On the other hand, when the size of the operand can't be concluded from the instruction, in Intel syntax you have to add 'BYTE PTR', 'WORD PTR', 'DWORD PTR' or 'QWORD PTR' to disambiguate the situation. For example mov [ebx], 2 is not unique, so in Intel's syntax you have to write respectively mov BYTE PTR [ebx], 2 mov WORD PTR [ebx], 2 mov DWORD PTR [ebx], 2
  - Annatar 11y ago
    Coming from MOS 6502 / 6510 / Motorola MC680## background, movl -4(%ebp), %eax is intuitive to me. On the Motorola MC68000 family, it would have been move.l -4(sp), a0 so I can hit the ground running with AT & T syntax. The first time I saw mov eax, [ebp-4] I wanted to take a hammer and beat the idiotic IBM PC tin-bucket into oblivion. Did the square brackets have any special meaning? Who the hell knows! What do they mean?!? Completely unintuitive. With AT & T syntax, I can even hit the ground running reading SPARC assembler: mov 5, %g31 moves five to global register 31. Perfectly logical and intuitive, and I didn't even have to know anything about SPARC assembler. Then there is the deadbeefh instead of $deadbeef or 0xdeadbeef syntax. Everybody else either used $deadbeef or 0xdeadbeef, but not intel, oh no! intel just had to be different. Irritating to no end. Again, taking a hammer to the PC bucket was a temptation... Only intel could come up with something which does not relate to anything.

Annatar 11y ago

> There's GNU as (gas), which I've used quite a bit, but wouldn't really recommend because it uses strange "AT&T" syntax All AT & T syntax is, is move src, dst rather than intel's move into dst, src as far as I know, intel is the only company which did that, and to me, it is intuitive to move something somewhere, rather than to somewhere move something.

Narishma 11y ago
I think most popular assemblers use dst,src not just Intel. I know z80, 68k, PPC and ARM do at least.
- Annatar 11y ago
  PPC and Motorola 680## series, as well as (Ultra)SPARC all use src, dst.
pjmlp 11y ago
Intel's syntax is most common, not the AT&T one. You only see it everywhere nowadays thanks to the rise of GNU/Linux and other open source UNIXes. If you translate mov into =, the syntax makes much more sense than AT&T. I mean mov dst, src is similar to dst = src
- wolfgke 11y ago
  > Intel's syntax is most common, not the AT&T one. I'd be a little bit more careful with such a statement: Under Windows (and formerly DOS) Intel syntax is the common one, while under GNU/Linux and OSX the AT&T one is used. > If you translate mov into =, the syntax makes much more sense than AT&T. Though I prefer the Intel syntax, I'd be careful with "makes sense" here: According to http://stackoverflow.com/a/4119217/497193 http://stackoverflow.com/a/4119217/497193 people who grew up with MIPS seem to prefer the AT&T syntax since it is much more similar to MIPS assembler.
  - pjmlp 11y ago
    Apparently you missed my second paragraph. Only UNIX based OSes follow AT&T, for obvious reasons.
    - Annatar 11y ago
      It has nothing to do with the operating system. AT & T syntax follows the same style as pretty much any other computer and processor in existence. (Exceptions exist, but they are exotic oddities.)
- Annatar 11y ago
  > Intel's syntax is most common, not the AT&T one. No, intel is an exception, not the norm. Amstrad, Atari, Commodore 64, Amiga, Sun (both Motorola and (Ultra)SPARC) all use "move src, dst", $ or 0x... only intel diverges from the norm.
wolfgke 11y ago
There are much more differences (sources: http://www.imada.sdu.dk/Courses/DM18/Litteratur/IntelnATT.htm http://www.imada.sdu.dk/Courses/DM18/Litteratur/IntelnATT.ht..., http://stackoverflow.com/a/9951916/497193 http://stackoverflow.com/a/9951916/497193) In Intel syntax instructions are not suffixed. In AT&T there is a suffix (q, d, w, b) depending on the operand size. For example (assuming 32 bit register) mov (Intel) gets movl (AT&T). Also the argument order is changed. Constants have to be prefixed by $. Hexadecimal values are prefixed with 0x instead of suffixed with h. Registers are prefixed with %. With this we already have mov eax,1 mov ebx,0ffh vs. movl $1,%eax movl $0xff,%ebx But also the notation for accessing memory is different: For encoding the SIB (Scaled Index Byte) (+ disp[lacement], if desired), Intel uses [base+disp+index * scale], while AT&T uses disp(%base, %index, scale). Thus we have mov edx, [ecx] mov eax, [ebp-4] mov eax, [ebp-4+edx*4] lea eax, [eax*4+8] lea eax, [eax*2+eax] vs. movl (%ecx), %edx movl -4(%ebp), %eax movl -4(%ebp, %edx, 4), %eax leal 8(,%eax,4), %eax leal (%eax,%eax,2), %eax Edit: On the other hand, when the size of the operand can't be concluded from the instruction, in Intel syntax you have to add 'BYTE PTR', 'WORD PTR', 'DWORD PTR' or 'QWORD PTR' to disambiguate the situation. For example mov [ebx], 2 is not unique, so in Intel's syntax you have to write respectively mov BYTE PTR [ebx], 2 mov WORD PTR [ebx], 2 mov DWORD PTR [ebx], 2
- Annatar 11y ago
  Coming from MOS 6502 / 6510 / Motorola MC680## background, movl -4(%ebp), %eax is intuitive to me. On the Motorola MC68000 family, it would have been move.l -4(sp), a0 so I can hit the ground running with AT & T syntax. The first time I saw mov eax, [ebp-4] I wanted to take a hammer and beat the idiotic IBM PC tin-bucket into oblivion. Did the square brackets have any special meaning? Who the hell knows! What do they mean?!? Completely unintuitive. With AT & T syntax, I can even hit the ground running reading SPARC assembler: mov 5, %g31 moves five to global register 31. Perfectly logical and intuitive, and I didn't even have to know anything about SPARC assembler. Then there is the deadbeefh instead of $deadbeef or 0xdeadbeef syntax. Everybody else either used $deadbeef or 0xdeadbeef, but not intel, oh no! intel just had to be different. Irritating to no end. Again, taking a hammer to the PC bucket was a temptation... Only intel could come up with something which does not relate to anything.