Basic Practices in Assembly Language Programming

Contents

 

Introduction

Assembly language is a low-level programming language for niche platforms such as IoTs, device drivers, and embedded systems. Usually, it’s the sort of language that Computer Science students should cover in their coursework and rarely use in their future jobs. From TIOBE Programming Community Index, assembly language has enjoyed a steady rise in the rankings of the most popular programming languages recently.

In the early days, when an application was written in assembly language, it had to fit in a small amount of memory and run as efficiently as possible on slow processors. When memory becomes plentiful and processor speed is dramatically increased, we mainly rely on high level languages with ready made structures and libraries in development. If necessary, assembly language can be used to optimize critical sections for speed or to directly access non-portable hardware. Today assembly language still plays an important role in embedded system design, where performance efficiency is still considered as an important requirement.

In this article, we’ll talk about some basic criteria and code skills specific to assembly language programming. Also, considerations would be emphasized on execution speed and memory consumption. I’ll analyze some examples, related to the concepts of register, memory, and stack, operators and constants, loops and procedures, system calls, etc.. For simplicity, all samples are in 32-bit, but most ideas will be easily applied to 64-bit.

All the materials presented here came from my teaching [1] for years. Thus, to read this article, a general understanding of Intel x86-64 assembly language is necessary, and being familiar with Visual Studio 2010 or above is assumed. Preferred, having read Kip Irvine’s textbook [2] and the MASM Programmer’s Guide [3] are recommended. If you are taking an Assembly Language Programming class, this could be a supplemental reading for studies.

About instruction

The first two rules are general. If you can use less, don’t use more.

1. Using less instructions

Suppose that we have a 32-bit

DWORD

variable:

.data
   var1 DWORD 123

The example is to add

var1

to

EAX

. This is correct with

MOV

and

ADD

:

mov ebx, var1
add eax, ebx

But as

ADD

can accept one memory operand, you can just

add eax, var1

2. Using an instruction with less bytes

Suppose that we have an array:

.data
   array DWORD 1,2,3

If want to rearrange the values to be 3,1,2, you could

mov eax,array           ;        eax =1
xchg eax,[array+4]      ; 1,1,3, eax =2
xchg eax,[array+8]      ; 1,1,2, eax =3
xchg array,eax          ; 3,1,2, eax =1

But notice that the last instruction should be

MOV

instead of

XCHG

. Although both can assign

3

in

EAX

to the first array element, the other way around in exchange

XCHG

is logically unnecessary.

Be aware of code size,

MOV

takes 5-byte machine code but

XCHG

takes 6, as another reason to choose

MOV

here:

00000011  87 05 00000000 R      xchg array,eax
00000017  A3 00000000 R         mov array,eax

To check machine code, you can generate a listing file in assembling or open the Disassembly window at runtime in Visual Studio. Also, you can look up from the Intel instruction manual.

About register and memory

In this section, we’ll use a popular example, the nth Fibonacci number, to illustrate multiple solutions in assembly language. The C function would be like:

unsigned int Fibonacci(unsigned int n)
{
    unsigned int previous = 1, current = 1, next = 0;
    for (unsigned int i = 3; i <= n; ++i) 
    {
        next = current + previous;
        previous = current;
        current = next;
    }
    return next;
}

3. Implementing with memory variables

At first, let’s copy the same idea from above with two variables

previous

and

current

created here

.data
   previous DWORD ?
   current  DWORD ?

We can use

EAX

store the result without the

next

variable. Since

MOV

cannot move from memory to memory, a register like

EDX

must be involved for assignment

previous = current

. The following is the procedure

FibonacciByMemory

. It receives

n

from

ECX

and returns

EAX

as the nth Fibonacci number calculated:

;------------------------------------------------------------
FibonacciByMemory PROC 
; Receives: ECX as input n 
; Returns: EAX as nth Fibonacci number calculated
;------------------------------------------------------------
   mov   eax,1         
   mov   previous,0         
   mov   current,0         
L1:
   add eax,previous       ; eax = current + previous      
   mov edx, current       ; previous = current
   mov previous, edx
   mov current, eax
loop   L1
   ret
FibonacciByMemory ENDP

4. If you can use registers, don’t use memory

A basic rule in assembly language programming is that if you can use a register, don’t use a variable. The register operation is much faster than that of memory. The general purpose registers available in 32-bit are

EAX

,

EBX

,

ECX

,

EDX

,

ESI

, and

EDI

. Don’t touch

ESP

and

EBP

that are for system use.

Now let

EBX

replace the

previous

variable and

EDX

replace

current

. The following is

FibonacciByRegMOV

, simply with three instructions needed in the loop:

;------------------------------------------------------------
FibonacciByRegMOV PROC 
; Receives: ECX as input n 
; Returns: EAX, nth Fibonacci number
;------------------------------------------------------------
   mov   eax,1         
   xor   ebx,ebx      
   xor   edx,edx      
L1:
   add  eax,ebx      ; eax += ebx
   mov  ebx,edx
   mov  edx,eax
loop   L1
   ret
FibonacciByRegMOV ENDP

A further simplified version is to make use of

XCHG

which steps up the sequence without need of

EDX

. The following shows

FibonacciByRegXCHG

machine code in its listing, where only two instructions of three machine-code bytes in the loop body:

           ;------------------------------------------------------------
000000DF    FibonacciByRegXCHG PROC
           ; Receives: ECX as input n
           ; Returns: EAX, nth Fibonacci number
           ;------------------------------------------------------------
000000DF  33 C0         xor   eax,eax
000000E1  BB 00000001   mov   ebx,1
000000E6             L1:
000000E6  93            xchg eax,ebx      ; step up the sequence
000000E7  03 C3         add  eax,ebx      ; eax += ebx
000000E9  E2 FB      loop   L1
000000EB  C3            ret
000000EC    FibonacciByRegXCHG ENDP

In concurrent programming

The x86-64 instruction set provides many atomic instructions with the ability to temporarily inhibit interrupts, ensuring that the currently running process cannot be context switched, and suffices on a uniprocessor. In someway, it also would avoid the race condition in multi-tasking. These instructions can be directly used by compiler and operating system writers.

5. Using atomic instructions

As seen above used

XCHG

, so called as atomic swap, is more powerful than some high level language with just one statement:

xchg  eax, var1

A classical way to swap a register with a memory

var1

could be

mov ebx, eax
mov eax, var1
mov var1, ebx

Moreover, if you use the Intel486 instruction set with the .486 directive or above, simply using the atomic

XADD

is more concise in the Fibonacci procedure.

XADD

exchanges the first operand (destination) with the second operand (source), then loads the sum of the two values into the destination operand. Thus we have

           ;------------------------------------------------------------
000000EC    FibonacciByRegXADD PROC
           ; Receives: ECX as input n
           ; Returns: EAX, nth Fibonacci number
           ;------------------------------------------------------------
000000EC  33 C0         xor   eax,eax
000000EE  BB 00000001   mov   ebx,1
000000F3             L1:
000000F3  0F C1 D8      xadd eax,ebx   ; first exchange and then add
000000F6  E2 FB      loop   L1
000000F8  C3            ret
000000F9    FibonacciByRegXADD ENDP

Two atomic move extensions are

MOVZX

and

MOVSX

. Another worth mentioning is bit test instructions,

BT

,

BTC

,

BTR

, and

BTS

. For the following example

.data
  Semaphore WORD 10001000b
.code
  btc Semaphore, 6  ; CF=0, Semaphore WORD 11001000b

Imagine the instruction set without

BTC

, one non-atomic implementation for the same logic would be

mov ax, Semaphore
shr ax, 7
xor Semaphore,01000000b

Little-endian

An x86 processor stores and retrieves data from memory using little-endian order (low to high). The least significant byte is stored at the first memory address allocated for the data. The remaining bytes are stored in the next consecutive memory positions.

6. Memory representations

Consider the following data definitions:

.data
dw1 DWORD 12345678h
dw2 DWORD 'AB', '123', 123h
;dw3 DWORD 'ABCDE'  ; error A2084: constant value too large
by3 BYTE 'ABCDE', 0FFh, 'A', 0Dh, 0Ah, 0
w1 WORD 123h, 'AB', 'A'

For simplicity, the hexadecimal constants are used as initializer. The memory representation is as follows:

As for multiple-byte

DWORD

and

WORD

date, they are represented by the little-endian order. Based on this, the second

DWORD

initialized with

'AB'

should be

00004142h

and next

'123'

is

00313233h

in their original order. You can’t initialize

dw3

as

'ABCDE'

that contains five bytes

4142434445h

, while you really can initialize

by3

in a byte memory since no little-endian for byte data. Similarly, see

w1

for a

WORD

memory.

7. A code error hidden by little-endian

From the last section of using

XADD

, we try to fill in a byte array with first 7 Fibonacci numbers, as

01

,

01

,

02

,

03

,

05

,

08

,

0D

. The following is such a simple implementation but with a bug. The bug does not show up an error immediately because it has been hidden by little-endian.

FibCount = 7
.data
FibArray BYTE FibCount DUP(0ffh)
BYTE 'ABCDEF' 

.code
   mov  edi, OFFSET FibArray       
   mov  eax,1             
   xor  ebx,ebx          
   mov  ecx, FibCount        
 L1:
   mov  [edi], eax                
   xadd eax, ebx                      
   inc  edi                  
 loop L1

To debug, I purposely make a memory

'ABCDEF'

at the end of the byte array

FibArray

with seven

0ffh

initialized. The initial memory looks like this:

Let’s set a breakpoint in the loop. When the first number

01

filled, it is followed by three zeros as this:

But OK, the second number

01

comes to fill the second byte to overwrite three zeros left by the first. So on and so forth, until the seventh

0D

, it just fits the last byte here:

All fine with an expected result in

FibArray

because of little-endian. Only when you define some memory immediately after this

FibArray

, your first three byte will be overwritten by zeros, as here

'ABCDEF'

becomes

'DEF'

. How to make an easy fix?

About runtime stack

The runtime stack is a memory array directly managed by the CPU, with the stack pointer register

ESP

holding a 32-bit offset on the stack.

ESP

is modified by instructions

CALL

,

RET

,

PUSH

,

POP

, etc.. When use

PUSH

and

POP

or alike, you explicitly change the stack contents. You should be very cautious without affecting other implicit use, like

CALL

and

RET

, because you programmer and the system share the same runtime stack.

8. Assignment with PUSH and POP is not efficient

In assembly code, you definitely can make use of the stack to do assignment

previous = current

, as in

FibonacciByMemory

. The following is

FibonacciByStack

where only difference is using

PUSH

and

POP

instead of two

MOV

instructions with

EDX

.

;------------------------------------------------------------
FibonacciByStack 
; Receives: ECX as input n 
; Returns: EAX, nth Fibonacci number
;------------------------------------------------------------
   mov   eax,1         
   mov   previous,0         
   mov   current,0         
L1:
   add  eax,previous      ; eax = current + previous     
   push current           ; previous = current
   pop  previous
   mov  current, eax
loop   L1
   ret
FibonacciByStack ENDP

As you can imagine, the runtime stack built on memory is much slower than registers. If you create a test benchmark to compare above procedures in a long loop, you’ll find that

FibonacciByStack

is the most inefficient. My suggestion is that if you can use a register or memory, don’t use

PUSH

and

POP

.

9. Using INC to avoid PUSHFD and POPFD

When you use the instruction

ADC

or

SBB

to add or subtract an integer with the previous carry, you reasonably want to reserve the previous carry flag (

CF

) with

PUSHFD

and

POPFD

, since an address update with

ADD

will overwrite the

CF

. The following

Extended_Add

example borrowed from the textbook [2] is to calculate the sum of two extended long integers

BYTE

by

BYTE

:

;--------------------------------------------------------
Extended_Add PROC
; Receives: ESI and EDI point to the two long integers
;           EBX points to an address that will hold sum
;           ECX indicates the number of BYTEs to be added
; Returns:  EBX points to an address of the result sum
;--------------------------------------------------------
   clc                      ; clear the Carry flag
   L1:
      mov   al,[esi]        ; get the first integer
      adc   al,[edi]        ; add the second integer
      pushfd                ; save the Carry flag

      mov   [ebx],al        ; store partial sum
      add   esi, 1          ; point to next byte   
      add   edi, 1
      add   ebx, 1          ; point to next sum byte   
      popfd                 ; restore the Carry flag
   loop   L1                ; repeat the loop

   mov   dword ptr [ebx],0  ; clear high dword of sum
   adc   dword ptr [ebx],0  ; add any leftover carry
   ret
Extended_Add ENDP

As we know, the

INC

instruction makes an increment by 1 without affecting the

CF

. Obviously we can replace above

ADD

with

INC

to avoid

PUSHFD

and

POPFD

. Thus the loop is simplified like this:

L1:
   mov   al,[esi]        ; get the first integer
   adc   al,[edi]        ; add the second integer

   mov   [ebx],al        ; store partial sum
   inc   esi             ; add one without affecting CF
   inc   edi
   inc   ebx
loop   L1                ; repeat the loop

Now you might ask what if to calculate the sum of two long integers

DWORD

by

DWORD

where each iteration must update the addresses by 4 bytes, as

TYPE DWORD

. We still can make use of

INC

to have such an implementation:

clc
xor   ebx, ebx

L1:
    mov eax, [esi +ebx*TYPE DWORD]
    adc eax, [edi +ebx*TYPE DWORD]
    mov [edx +ebx*TYPE DWORD], eax
    inc ebx
loop  L1

Applying a scaling factor here would be more general and preferred. Similarly, wherever necessary, you also can use the

DEC

instruction that makes a decrement by 1 without affecting the carry flag.

10. Another good reason to avoid PUSH and POP

Since you and the system share the same stack, you should be very careful without disturbing the system use. If you forget to make

PUSH

and

POP

in pair, an error could happen, especially in a conditional jump when the procedure returns.

The following

Search2DAry

searches a 2-dimensional array for a value passed in

EAX

. If it is found, simply jump to the

FOUND

label returning one in

EAX

as true, else set

EAX

zero as false.

;------------------------------------------------------------
Search2DAry PROC
; Receives: EAX, a byte value to search a 2-dimensional array
;           ESI, an address to the 2-dimensional array
; Returns: EAX, 1 if found, 0 if not found
;------------------------------------------------------------
   mov  ecx,NUM_ROW        ; outer loop count

ROW:   
   push ecx                ; save outer loop counter
   mov  ecx,NUM_COL        ; inner loop counter

   COL:   
      cmp al, [esi+ecx-1]
      je FOUND   
   loop COL

   add esi, NUM_COL
   pop  ecx                ; restore outer loop counter
loop ROW                   ; repeat outer loop

   mov eax, 0
   jmp QUIT
FOUND: 
   mov eax, 1
QUIT:
   ret
Search2DAry ENDP

Let’s call it in

main

by preparing the argument

ESI

pointing to the array address and the search value

EAX

to be

31h

or

30h

respectively for not-found or found test case:

.data
ary2D   BYTE  10h,  20h,  30h,  40h,  50h
        BYTE  60h,  70h,  80h,  90h,  0A0h
NUM_COL = 5
NUM_ROW = 2

.code
main PROC
   mov esi, OFFSET ary2D
   mov eax, 31h            ; crash if set 30h 
   call Search2DAry
; See eax for search result
   exit
main ENDP

Unfortunately, it’s only working in not-found for

31h

. A crash occurs for a successful searching like

30h

, because of the stack leftover from an outer loop counter pushed. Sadly enough, that leftover being popped by

RET

becomes a return address to the caller.

Therefore, it’s better to use a register or variable to save the outer loop counter here. Although the logic error is still, a crash would not happen without interfering with the system. As a good exercise, you can try to fix.

Assembling time vs. runtime

I would like to talk more about this assembly language feature. Preferred, if you can do something at assembling time, don’t do it at runtime. Organizing logic in assembling indicates doing a job at static (compilation) time, not consuming runtime. Differently from high level languages, all operators in assembly language are processed in assembling such as

+

,

-

,

*

, and

/

, while only instructions work at runtime like

ADD

,

SUB

,

MUL

, and

DIV

.

11. Implementing with plus (+) instead of ADD

Let’s redo Fibonacci calculating to implement

eax = ebx + edx

in assembling with the plus operator by help of the

LEA

instruction. The following is

FibonacciByRegLEA

with only one line changed from

FibonacciByRegMOV

.

;------------------------------------------------------------
FibonacciByRegLEA 
; Receives: ECX as input n 
; Returns: EAX, nth Fibonacci number
;------------------------------------------------------------
   xor   eax,eax         
   xor   ebx,ebx      
   mov   edx,1      
L1:
   lea  eax, DWORD PTR [ebx+edx]  ; eax = ebx + edx
   mov  edx,ebx
   mov  ebx,eax
loop   L1

   ret
FibonacciByRegLEA ENDP

This statement is encoded as three bytes implemented in machine code without an addition operation explicitly at runtime:

000000CE  8D 04 1A      lea eax, DWORD PTR [ebx+edx]  ; eax = ebx + edx

This example doesn’t make too much performance difference, compared to

FibonacciByRegMOV

. But is enough as an implementation demo.

12. If you can use an operator, don’t use an instruction

For an array defined as:

.data
   Ary1 DWORD 20 DUP(?)

If you want to traverse it from the second element to the middle one, you might think of this like in other language:

mov esi, OFFSET Ary1
add esi, TYPE DWORD    ; start at the second value 
mov ecx LENGTHOF Ary1  ; total number of values
sub ecx, 1
div ecx, 2             ; set loop counter in half
L1:
   ; do traversing
Loop L1

Remember that

ADD

,

SUB

, and

DIV

are dynamic behavior at runtime. If you know values in advance, they are unnecessary to calculate at runtime, instead, apply operators in assembling:

mov esi, OFFSET Ary1 + TYPE DWORD   ; start at the second
mov ecx (LENGTHOF Ary1 -1)/2        ; set loop counter
L1:
   ; do traversing
Loop L1

This saves three instructions in the code segment at runtime. Next, let’s save memory in the data segment.

13. If you can use a symbolic constant, don’t use a variable

Like operators, all directives are processed at assembling time. A variable consumes memory and has to be accessed at runtime. As for the last

Ary1

, you may want to remember its size in byte and the number of elements like this:

.data
   Ary1 DWORD 20 DUP(?)
   arySizeInByte DWORD ($ - Ary1)  ; 80
   aryLength DWORD LENGTHOF Ary1   ; 20

It is correct but not preferred because of using two variables. Why not simply make them symbolic constants to save the memory of two

DWORD

?

.data
   Ary1 DWORD 20 DUP(?)
   arySizeInByte = ($ - Ary1)      ; 80
   aryLength EQU LENGTHOF Ary1     ; 20

Using either equal sign or EQU directive is fine. The constant is just a replacement during code preprocessing.

14. Generating the memory block in macro

For an amount of data to initialize, if you already know the logic how to create, you can use macro to generate memory blocks in assembling, instead of at runtime. The following macro creates all

47

Fibonacci numbers in a

DWORD

array named

FibArray

:

.data
val1 = 1
val2 = 1
val3 = val1 + val2 

FibArray LABEL DWORD
DWORD val1                ; first two values
DWORD val2
WHILE val3 LT 0FFFFFFFFh  ; less than 4-billion, 32-bit
   DWORD val3             ; generate unnamed memory data
   val1 = val2
   val2 = val3
   val3 = val1 + val2
ENDM

As macro goes to the assembler to be processed statically, this saves considerable initializations at runtime, as opposed to

FibonacciByXXX

mentioned before.

For more about macro in MASM, see my article Something You May Not Know About the Macro in MASM [4]. I also made a reverse engineering for the

switch

statement in VC++ compiler implementation. Interestingly, under some condition the

switch

statement chooses the binary search but without exposing the prerequisite of a sort implementation at runtime. It’s reasonable to think of the preprocessor that does the sorting with all known

case

values in compilation. The static sorting behavior (as opposed to dynamic behavior at runtime), could be implemented with a macro procedure, directives and operators. For details, please see Something You May Not Know About the Switch Statement in C/C++ [5].

About loop design

Almost every language provides an unconditional jump like

GOTO

, but most of us rarely use it based on software engineering principles. Instead, we use others like

break

and

continue

. While in assembly language, we rely more on jumps either conditional or unconditional to make control workflow more freely. In the following sections, I list some ill-coded patterns.

15. Encapsulating all loop logic in the loop body

To construct a loop, try to make all your loop contents in the loop body. Don’t jump out to do something and then jump back into the loop. The example here is to traverse a one-dimensional integer array. If find an odd number, increment it, else do nothing.

Two unclear solutions with the correct result would be possibly like:

   mov ecx, LENGTHOF array
   xor esi, esi
L1: 
   test array[esi], 1
   jnz ODD
PASS:
   add esi, TYPE DWORD
loop L1
   jmp DONE

ODD: 
  inc array[esi]
jmp PASS
DONE:
   mov ecx, LENGTHOF array
   xor esi, esi
   jmp L1

ODD: 
  inc array[esi]
jmp PASS

L1: 
   test array[esi], 1
   jnz ODD
PASS:
   add esi, TYPE DWORD
loop L1

However, they both do incrementing outside and then jump back. They make a check in the loop but the left does incrementing after the loop and the right does before the loop. For a simple logic, you may not think like this; while for a complicated problem, assembly language could lead astray to produce such a spaghetti pattern. The following is a good one, which encapsulates all logic in the loop body, concise, readable, maintainable, and efficient.

   mov ecx, LENGTHOF array
   xor esi, esi
L1: 
   test array[esi], 1
   jz PASS
   inc array[esi]
PASS:
   add esi, TYPE DWORD
loop L1

16. Loop entrance and exit

Usually preferred is a loop with one entrance and one exit. But if necessary, two or more conditional exits are fine as shown in

Search2DAry

with found and not-found results.

The following is a bad pattern of two-entrance, where one gets into

START

via initialization and another directly goes to

MIDDLE

. Such a code is pretty hard to understand. Need to reorganize or refactor the loop logic.

   ; do something
   je MIDDLE

   ; loop initialization
START: 
   ; do something

MIDDLE:
   ; do something
loop START

The following is a bad pattern of two-loop ends, where some logic gets out of the first loop end while the other exits at the second. Such a code is quite confusing. Try to reconsider with a label jumping to maintain one loop end.

   ; loop initialization
START2: 
   ; do something
   je NEXT
   ; do something
loop START2
   jmp DONE

NEXT:
   ; do something
loop START2
DONE:

17. Don’t change ECX in the loop body

The register

ECX

acts as a loop counter and its value is implicitly decremented when using the

LOOP

instruction. You can read

ECX

and make use of its value in iteration. As see in

Search2DAry

in the previous section, we compare the indirect operand

[ESI+ECX-1]

with

AL

. But never try to change the loop counter within the loop body that makes code hard to understand and hard to debug. A good practice is to think of the loop counter

ECX

as read-only.

   ; do initialization
   mov ecx, 10
L1: 
   ; do something
   mov eax, ecx                      ; fine
   mov ebx, [esi +ecx *TYPE DWORD]   ; fine
   mov ecx, edx                      ; not good 
   inc ecx                           ; not good
   ; do something
loop L1

18. When jump backward…

Besides the

LOOP

instruction, assembly language programming can heavily rely on conditional or unconditional jumps to create a loop when the count is not determined before the loop. Theoretically, for a backward jump, the workflow might be considered as a loop. Assume that

jx

and

jy

are desired jump or

LOOP

instructions. The following backward

jy L2

nested in the

jx L1

is probably thought of as an inner loop.

; loop initialization 
L1: 
   ; do something
 L2: 
   ; do something
 jy L2
   ; do something
jx L1

To have selection logic of if-then-else, it’s reasonable to use a foreword jump like this as branching in the

jx L1

iteration:

; loop initialization 
L1: 
   ; do something
 jy TrueLogic
   ; do something for false
   jmp DONE
 TrueLogic:
   ; do something for true
DONE:
   ; do something
jx L1

About procedure

Similar to functions in C/C++, we talk about some basics in assembly language’s procedure.

19. Making a clear calling interface

When design a procedure, we hope to make it as reusable as possible. Make it perform only one task without others like I/O. The procedure’s caller should take the responsibility to do input and putout. The caller should communicate with the procedure only by arguments and parameters. The procedure should only use parameters in its logic without referring outside definitions, without any:

  • Global variable and array
  • Global symbolic constant

Because implementing with such a definition makes your procedure un-reusable.

Recalling previous five

FibonacciByXXX

procedures, we use register

ECX

as both argument and parameter with the return value in

EAX

to make a clear calling interface:

;------------------------------------------------------------
FibonacciByXXX 
; Receives: ECX as input n 
; Returns: EAX, nth Fibonacci number
;------------------------------------------------------------

Now the caller can do like

; Read user’s input n and save in ECX
call FibonacciByXXX
; Output or process the nth Fibonacci number in EAX

To illustrate as a second example, let’s take a look again at calling

Search2DAry

in the previous section. The register arguments

ESI

and

EAX

are prepared so that the implementation of

Search2DAry

doesn’t directly refer to the global array,

ary2D

.

... ...
NUM_COL = 5
NUM_ROW = 2

.code
main PROC
   mov esi, OFFSET ary2D
   mov eax, 31h 
   call Search2DAry
; See eax for search result
   exit
main ENDP

;------------------------------------------------------------
Search2DAry PROC
; Receives: EAX, a byte value to search a 2-dimensional array
;           ESI, an address to the 2-dimensional array
; Returns: EAX, 1 if found, 0 if not found
;------------------------------------------------------------
   mov  ecx,NUM_ROW        ; outer loop count
... ...
   mov  ecx,NUM_COL        ; inner loop counter
... ...

Unfortunately, the weakness is its implementation still using two global constants

NUM_ROW

and

NUM_COL

that makes it not being called elsewhere. To improve, supplying other two register arguments would be an obvious way, or see the next section.

20. INVOKE vs. CALL

Besides the

CALL

instruction from Intel, MASM provides the 32-bit

INVOKE

directive to make a procedure call easier. For the

CALL

instruction, you only can use registers as argument/parameter pair in calling interface as shown above. The problem is that the number of registers is limited. All registers are global and you probably have to save registers before calling and restore after calling. The

INVOKE

directive gives the form of a procedure with a parameter-list, as you experienced in high level languages.

When consider

Search2DAry

with a parameter-list without referring the global constants

NUM_ROW

and

NUM_COL

, we can have its prototype like this

;---------------------------------------------------------------------
Search2DAry PROTO, pAry2D: PTR BYTE, val: BYTE, nRow: WORD, nCol: WORD 
; Receives: pAry2D, an address to the 2-dimensional array
;           val, a byte value to search a 2-dimensional array 
;           nRow, the number of rows 
;           nCol, the number of columns
; Returns: EAX, 1 if found, 0 if not found
;---------------------------------------------------------------------

Again, as an exercise, you can try to implement this for a fix. Now you just do

INVOKE Search2DAry, ary2D, 31h, NUM_ROW, NUM_COL
; See eax for search result

Likewise, to construct a parameter-list procedure, you still need to follow the rule without referring global variables and constants. Besides, also attention to:

  • The entire calling interface should only go through the parameter list without referring any register values set outside the procedure.

21. Call-by-Value vs. Call-by-Reference

Also be aware of that a parameter-list should not be too long. If so, use an object parameter instead. Suppose that you fully understood the function concept, call-by-value and call-by-reference in high level languages. By learning the stack frame in assembly language, you understand more about the low-level function calling mechanism. Usually for an object argument, we prefer passing a reference, an object address, rather than the whole object copied on the stack memory.

To demonstrate this, let’s create a procedure to write month, day, and year from an object of the Win32 SYSTEMTIME structure.

The following is the version of call-by-value, where we use the dot operator to retrieve individual

WORD

field members from the

DateTime

object and extend their 16-bit values to 32-bit

EAX

:

;--------------------------------------------------------
WriteDateByVal PROC, DateTime:SYSTEMTIME
; Receives: DateTime, an object of SYSTEMTIME
;--------------------------------------------------------
   movzx eax, DateTime.wMonth
   ; output eax as month
   ; output a separator like '/' 
   movzx eax, DateTime.wDay
   ; output eax as day
   ; output a separator like '/' 
   movzx eax, DateTime.wYear
   ; output eax as year
   ; make a newline
   ret
WriteDateByVal ENDP

The version of call-by-reference is not so straight with an object address received. Not like the arrow ->, pointer operator in C/C++, we have to save the pointer (address) value in a 32-bit register like

ESI

. By using

ESI

as an indirect operand, we must cast its memory back to the

SYSTEMTIME

type. Then we can get the object members with the dot:

;--------------------------------------------------------
WriteDateByRef PROC, datetimePtr: PTR SYSTEMTIME
; Receives: DateTime, an address of SYSTEMTIME object
;--------------------------------------------------------
   mov esi, datetimePtr
   movzx eax, (SYSTEMTIME PTR [esi]).wMonth
   ; output eax as month
   ; output a separator like '/'
   movzx eax, (SYSTEMTIME PTR [esi]).wDay
   ; output eax as day
   ; output a separator like '/' 
   movzx eax, (SYSTEMTIME PTR [esi]).wYear
   ; output eax as year
   ; make a newline
   ret
WriteDateByRef ENDP

You can watch the stack frame of argument passed for two versions at runtime. For

WriteDateByVal

, eight

WORD

members are copied on the stack and consume sixteen bytes, while for

WriteDateByRef

, only need four bytes as a 32-bit address. It will make a big difference for a big structure object, though.

22. Avoid multiple RET

To construct a procedure, it’s ideal to make all your logics within the procedure body. Preferred is a procedure with one entrance and one exit. Since in assembly language programming, a procedure name is directly represented by a memory address, as well as any labels. Thus directly jumping to a label or a procedure without using

CALL

or

INVOKE

would be possible. Since such an abnormal entry would be quite rare, I am not to going to mention here.

Although multiple returns are sometimes used in other language examples, I don’t encourage such a pattern in assembly code. Multiple

RET

instructions could make your logic not easy to understand and debug. The following code on the left is such an example in branching. Instead, on the right, we have a label

QUIT

at the end and jump there making a single exit, where probably do common chaos to avoid repeated code.

MultiRetEx PROC
   ; do something 
   jx NEXTx
   ; do something
   ret

NEXTx: 
   ; do something
   jy NEXTy
   ; do something
   ret

NEXTy: 
   ; do something
   ret
MultiRetEx ENDP
SingleRetEx PROC
   ; do something 
   jx NEXTx
   ; do something
   jmp QUIT
NEXTx: 
   ; do something
   jy NEXTy
   ; do something
   jmp QUIT
NEXTy: 
   ; do something
QUIT:
   ; do common things
   ret
SingleRetEx ENDP

Object data members

Similar to above

SYSTEMTIME

structure, we can also create our own type or a nested:

Rectangle STRUCT
   UpperLeft COORD <>
   LowerRight COORD <>
Rectangle ENDS

.data
rect Rectangle { {10,20}, {30,50} }

The

Rectangle

type contains two COORD members,

UpperLeft

and

LowerRight

. The Win32

COORD

contains two

WORD

(

SHORT

),

X

and

Y

. Obviously, we can access the object

rect

’s data members with the dot operator from either direct or indirect operand like this

; directly access
mov rect.UpperLeft.X, 11

; cast indirect operand to access
mov esi,OFFSET rect
mov (Rectangle PTR [esi]).UpperLeft.Y, 22

; use the OFFSET operator for embedded members
mov esi,OFFSET rect.LowerRight
mov (COORD PTR [esi]).X, 33
mov esi,OFFSET rect.LowerRight.Y
mov WORD PTR [esi], 55

By using the

OFFSET

operator, we access different data member values with different type casts. Recall that any operator is processed in assembling at static time. What if we want to retrieve a data member’s address (not value) at runtime?

23. Indirect operand and LEA

For an indirect operand pointing to an object, you can’t use the

OFFSET

operator to get the member’s address, because

OFFSET

only can take an address of a variable defined in the data segment.

There could be a scenario that we have to pass an object reference argument to a procedure like

WriteDateByRef

in the previous section, but want to retrieve its member’s address (not value). Still use the above

rect

object for an example. The following second use of

OFFSET

is not valid in assembling:

mov esi,OFFSET rect
mov edi, OFFSET (Rectangle PTR [esi]).LowerRight

Let’s ask for help from the

LEA

instruction that you have seen in

FibonacciByRegLEA

in the previous section. The

LEA

instruction calculates and loads the effective address of a memory operand. Similar to the

OFFSET

operator, except that only

LEA

can obtain an address calculated at runtime:

mov esi,OFFSET rect
lea edi, (Rectangle PTR [esi]).LowerRight
mov ebx, OFFSET rect.LowerRight

lea edi, (Rectangle PTR [esi]).UpperLeft.Y
mov ebx, OFFSET rect.UpperLeft.Y

mov esi,OFFSET rect.UpperLeft
lea edi, (COORD PTR [esi]).Y

I purposely have

EBX

here to get an address statically and you can verify the same address in

EDI

that is loaded dynamically from the indirect operand

ESI

at runtime.

About system I/O

From Computer Memory Basics, we know that I/O operations from the operating system are quite slow. Input and output are usually in the measurement of milliseconds, compared with register and memory in nanoseconds or microseconds. To be more efficient, trying to reduce system API calls is a nice consideration. Here I mean Win32 API call. For details about the Win32 functions mentioned in the following, please refer to MSDN to understand.

24. Reducing system I/O API calls

An example is to output

20

lines of

50

random characters with random colors as below:

We definitely can generate one character to output a time, by using SetConsoleTextAttribute and WriteConsole. Simply set its color by

INVOKE SetConsoleTextAttribute, consoleOutHandle, wAttributes

Then write that character by

INVOKE WriteConsole,
   consoleOutHandle,    ; console output handle
   OFFSET buffer,       ; points to string
   1,                   ; string length
   OFFSET bytesWritten, ; returns number of bytes written
   0

When write

50

characters, make a new line. So we can create a nested iteration, the outer loop for

20

rows and the inner loop for

50

columns. As

50

by

20

, we call these two console output functions 1000 times.

However, another pair of API functions can be more efficient, by writing

50

characters in a row and setting their colors once a time. They are WriteConsoleOutputAttribute and WriteConsoleOutputCharacter. To make use of them, let’s create two procedures:

;-----------------------------------------------------------------------
ChooseColor PROC
; Selects a color with 50% probability of red, 25% green and 25% yellow
; Receives: nothing
; Returns:  AX = randomly selected color

;-----------------------------------------------------------------------
ChooseCharacter PROC
; Randomly selects an ASCII character, from ASCII code 20h to 07Ah
; Receives: nothing
; Returns:  AL = randomly selected character

We call them in a loop to prepare a

WORD

array

bufColor

and a BYTE array

bufChar

for all

50

characters selected. Now we can write the

50

random characters per line with two calls here:

INVOKE WriteConsoleOutputAttribute, 
      outHandle, 
      ADDR bufColor, 
      MAXCOL, 
      xyPos, 
      ADDR cellsWritten

INVOKE WriteConsoleOutputCharacter, 
      outHandle, 
      ADDR bufChar, 
      MAXCOL, 
      xyPos, 
      ADDR cellsWritten

Besides

bufColor

and

bufChar

, we define

MAXCOL = 50

and the

COORD

type

xyPos

so that

xyPos.y

is incremented each row in a single loop of

20

rows. Totally we only call these two APIs 20 times.

About PTR operator

MASM provides the operator

PTR

that is similar to the pointer

*

used in C/C++. The following is the

PTR

specification:

  • type PTR expression
    Forces the expression to be treated as having the specified type.
  • [[ distance ]] PTR type
    Specifies a pointer to type.

This means that two usages are available, such as

BYTE PTR

or

PTR BYTE

. Let’s discuss how to use them.

25. Defining a pointer, cast and dereference

The following C/C++ code demonstrates which type of Endian is used in your system, little endian or big endian? As an integer type takes four bytes, it makes a pointer type cast from the array name

fourBytes

, a

char

address, to an

unsigned int

address. Then it displays the integer result by dereferencing the

unsigned int

pointer.

int main()
{
   unsigned char fourBytes[] = { 0x12, 0x34, 0x56, 0x78 };
   // Cast the memory pointed by the array name fourBytes, to unsigned int address
   unsigned int *ptr = (unsigned int *)fourBytes;
   printf("1. Directly Cast: n is %Xh\n", *ptr);
   return 0;
}

As expected in x86 Intel based system, this verifies the little endian by showing

78563412

in hexadecimal. We can do the same thing in assembly language with

DWORD PTR

, which is just similar to an address casting to 4-byte

DWORD

, the

unsigned int

type.

.data
fourBytes BYTE 12h,34h,56h,78h

.code
mov eax, DWORD PTR fourBytes		; EAX = 78563412h

There is no explicit dereference here, since

DWORD PTR

combines four bytes into a

DWORD

memory and lets

MOV

retrieve it as a direct operand to

EAX

. This could be considered equivalent to the (

unsigned int *

) cast.

Now let’s do another way by using

PTR DWORD

. Again, with the same logic above, this time we define a

DWORD

pointer type first with

TYPEDEF

:

DWORD_POINTER TYPEDEF PTR DWORD

This could be considered equivalent to defining the pointer type as

unsigned int *

. Then in the following data segment, the address variable

dwPtr

takes over the

fourBytes

memory. Finally in code,

EBX

holds this address as an indirect operand and makes an explicit dereference here to get its

DWORD

value to

EAX

.

.data
fourBytes BYTE 12h,34h,56h,78h
dwPtr DWORD_POINTER fourBytes

.code
mov ebx, dwPtr       ; Get DWORD address		
mov eax, [ebx]       ; Dereference, EAX = 78563412h

To summarize,

PTR DWORD

indicates a

DWORD

address type to define(declare) a variable like a pointer type. While

DWORD PTR

indicates the memory pointed by a

DWORD

address like a type cast.

26. Using PTR in a procedure

To define a procedure with a parameter list, you might want to use

PTR

in both ways. The following is such an example to increment each element in a

DWORD

array:

;---------------------------------------------------------
IncrementArray PROC, pAry:PTR DWORD, count:DWORD
; Receives: pAry  - pointer to a DWORD array
;           count - the array count
; Returns:  pAry, every vlues in pAry incremented
;---------------------------------------------------------
   mov edi,pAry
   mov ecx,count                      

 L1:
   inc DWORD PTR [edi]
   add edi, TYPE DWORD
 loop L1
   ret
IncrementArray ENDP

As the first parameter

pAry

is a

DWORD

address, so

PTR DWORD

is used as a parameter type. In the procedure, when incrementing a value pointed by the indirect operand

EDI

, you must tell the system what the type(size) of that memory is by using

DWORD PTR

.

Another example is the earlier mentioned

WriteDateByRef

, where

SYSTEMTIME

is a Windows defined structure type.

;--------------------------------------------------------
WriteDateByRef PROC, datetimePtr: PTR SYSTEMTIME
; Receives: DateTime, an address of SYSTEMTIME object
;--------------------------------------------------------
   mov esi, datetimePtr
   movzx eax, (SYSTEMTIME PTR [esi]).wMonth
  ... ...
   ret
WriteDateByRef ENDP

Likewise, we use

PTR SYSTEMTIME

as the parameter type to define

datetimePtr

. When

ESI

receives an address from

datetimePtr

, it has no knowledge about the memory type just like a

void

pointer in C/C++. We have to cast it as a

SYSTEMTIME

memory, so as to retrieve its data members.

Signed and Unsigned

In assembly language programming, you can define an integer variable as either signed as

SBYTE

,

SWORD

, and

SDWORD

, or unsigned as

BYTE

,

WORD

, and

DWORD

. The data ranges, for example of 8-bit, are

  • BYTE

    : 0 to 255 (

    00h

    to

    FFh

    ), totally 256 numbers

  • SBYTE

    : half negatives, -128 to -1 (

    80h

    to

    FFh

    ), half positives, 0 to 127 (

    00h

    to

    7Fh

    )

Based on the hardware point of view, all CPU instructions operate exactly the same on signed and unsigned integers, because the CPU cannot distinguish between signed and unsigned. For example, when define

.data
   bVal   BYTE   255
   sbVal  SBYTR  -1

Both of them have the 8-bit binary

FFh

saved in memory or moved to a register. You, as a programmer, are solely responsible for using the correct data type with an instruction and are able to explain a results from the flags affected:

  • The carry flag
    CF

    for unsigned integers

  • The overflow flag
    OF

    for signed integers

The following are usually several tricks or pitfalls.

27. Comparison with conditional jumps

Let’s check the following code to see which label it jumps:

mov   eax, -1
cmp   eax, 1
ja    L1
jmp   L2

As we know,

CMP

follows the same logic as

SUB

while non-destructive to the destination operand. Using

JA

means considering unsigned comparison, where the destination

EAX

is

FFh

, i.e.

255

, while the source is

1

. Certainly

255

is bigger than

1

, so that makes it jump to

L1

. Thus, any unsigned comparisons such as

JA

,

JB

,

JAE

,

JNA

, etc. can be remembered as A(Above) or B(Below). An unsigned comparison is determined by

CF

and the zero flag

ZF

as shown in the following examples:

CMP if Destination Source ZF(ZR) CF(CY)
Destination<Source 1 2 0 1
Destination>Source 2 1 0 0
Destination=Source 1 1 1 0

Now let’s take a look at signed comparison with the following code to see where it jumps:

mov   eax, -1
cmp   eax, 1
jg    L1
jmp   L2

Only difference is

JG

here instead of

JA

. Using

JG

means considering signed comparison, where the destination

EAX

is

FFh

, i.e.

-1

, while the source is

1

. Certainly

-1

is smaller than

1

, so that makes

JMP

to

L2

. Likewise, any signed comparisons such as

JG

,

JL

,

JGE

,

JNG

, etc. can be thought of as G(Greater) or L(Less). A signed comparison is determined by

OF

and the sign flag

SF

as shown in the following examples:

CMP if Destination Source SF(PL) OF(OV)
Destination<Source: (SF != OF) -2 127 0 1
-2 1 1 0
Destination>Source: (SF == OF) 127 1 0 0
127 -1 1 1
Destination = Source 1 1 ZF=1

28. When CBW, CWD, or CDQ mistakenly meets DIV…

As we know, the

DIV

instruction is for unsigned to perform 8-bit, 16-bit, or 32-bit integer division with the dividend

AX

,

DX:AX

, or

EDX:EAX

respectively. As for unsigned, you have to clear the upper half by zeroing

AH

,

DX

, or

EDX

before using

DIV

. But when perform signed division with

IDIV

, the sign extension

CBW

,

CWD

, and

CDQ

are provided to extend the upper half before using

IDIV

.

For a positive integer, if its highest bit (sign bit) is zero, there is no difference to manually clear the upper part of a dividend or mistakenly use a sign extension as shown in the following example:

mov eax,1002h
cdq
mov ebx,10h
div ebx  ; Quotient EAX = 00000100h, Remainder EDX = 2

This is fine because

1000h

is a small positive and

CDQ

makes

EDX

zero, the same as directly clearing

EDX

. So if your value is positive and its highest bit is zero, using

CDQ

and

XOR EDX, EDX

are exactly the same.

However, it doesn’t mean that you can always use

CDQ

/

CWD

/

CBW

with

DIV

when perform a positive division. For an example of 8-bit,

129/2

, expecting quotient

64

and remainder

1

. But, if you make this

mov  al, 129
cbw             ; Extend AL to AH as negative AX = FF81h
mov  bl,2
div  bl         ; Unsigned DIV, Quotient should be 7FC0 over size of AL

Try above in debug to see how integer division overflow happens as a result. If really want to make it correct as unsigned

DIV

, you must:

mov  al, 129
XOR  ah, ah     ; extend AL to AH as positive
mov  bl,2
div  bl         ; Quotient AL = 40h,  Remainder AH = 1

On the other side, if really want to use

CBW

, it means that you perform a signed division. Then you must use

IDIV

:

mov  al, 129    ; 81h (-127d)
cbw             ; Extend AL to AH as negative AX = FF81h
mov  bl,2
idiv bl         ; Quotient AL = C1h (-63d), Remainder AH = FFh (-1)

As seen here,

81h

in signed byte is decimal

-127

so that signed

IDIV

gives the correct quotient and remainder as above

29. Why 255-1 and 255+(-1) affect CF differently?

To talk about the carry flag

CF

, let’s take the following two arithmetic calculations:

mov al, 255
sub al, 1      ; AL = FE  CF = 0

mov bl, 255
add bl, -1     ; BL = FE  CF = 1

From a human being’s point of view, they do exactly the same operation,

255

minus

1

with the result 254 (

FEh

). Likewise, based on the hardware point, for either calculation, the CPU does the same operation by representing

-1

as a two’s complement

FFh

and then add it to

255

. Now

255

is

FFh

and the binary format of

-1

is also

FFh

. This is how it has been calculated:

   1111 1111
+  1111 1111
-------------
   1111 1110

Remember? A CPU operates exactly the same on signed and unsigned because it cannot distinguish them. A programmer should be able to explain the behavior by the flag affected. Since we talk about the

CF

, it means we consider two calculations as unsigned. The key information is that

-1

is

FFh

and then

255

in decimal. So the logic interpretation of

CF

is

  • For
    sub al, 1

    , it means

    255

    minus

    1

    to result in

    254

    , without need of a borrow, so

    CF

    =

    0
  • For
    add bl, -1

    , it seems that

    255

    plus

    255

    is resulted in

    510

    , but with a carry

    1,0000,0000b

    (

    256

    ) out,

    254

    is a remainder left in byte, so

    CF

    =

    1

From hardware implementation,

CF

depends on which instruction used,

ADD

or

SUB

. Here MSB (Most Significant Bit) is the highest bit.

  • For
    ADD

    instruction,

    add bl, -1

    , directly use the carry out of the MSB, so

    CF

    =

    1
  • For
    SUB

    instruction,

    sub al, 1

    , must INVERT the carry out of the MSB, so

    CF

    =

    0

30. How to determine OF?

Now let’s see the overflow flag

OF

, still with above two arithmetic calculations as this:

mov al, 255
sub al, 1      ; AL = FE  OF = 0

mov bl, 255
add bl, -1     ; BL = FE  OF = 0

Both of them are not overflow, so

OF

=

0

. We can have two ways to determine

OF

, the logic rule and hardware implementation.

Logic viewpoint: The overflow flag is only set,

OF

=

1

, when

  • Two positive operands are added and their sum is negative
  • Two negative operands are added and their sum is positive

For signed,

255

is

-1

(

FFh

). The flag

OF

doesn’t care about

ADD

or

SUB

. Our two examples just do

-1

plus

-1

with the result

-2

. Thus, two negatives are added with the sum still negative, so

OF

=

0

.

Hardware implementation: For non-zero operands,

  • OF

    = (carry out of the MSB)

    XOR

    (carry into the MSB)

As seen our calculation again:

   1111 1111
+  1111 1111
-------------
   1111 1110

The carry out of the MSB is

1

and the carry into the MSB is also

1

. Then

OF

= (

1 XOR 1

) =

0

To practice more, the following table enumerates different test cases for your understanding:

Ambiguous «LOCAL» directive

As mentioned previously, the

PTR

operator has two usages such as

DWORD PTR

and

PTR DWORD

. But MASM provides another confused directive

LOCAL

, that is ambiguous depending on the context, where to use with exactly the same reserved word. The following is the specification from MSDN:

        LOCAL localname [[, localname]]…
LOCAL label [[ [count ] ]] [[:type]] [[, label [[ [count] ]] [[type]]]]…

  • In the first directive, within a macro,
    LOCAL

    defines labels that are unique to each instance of the macro.

  • In the second directive, within a procedure definition (PROC),
    LOCAL

    creates stack-based variables that exist for the duration of the procedure. The label may be a simple variable or an array containing count elements.

This specification is not clear enough to understand. In this section, I’ll expose the essential difference in between and show two example using the

LOCAL

directive, one in a procedure and the other in a macro. As for your familiarity, both examples calculate the nth Fibonacci number as early

FibonacciByMemory

. The main point delivered here is:

  • The variables declared by
    LOCAL

    in a macro are NOT local to the macro. They are system generated global variables on the data segment to resolve redefinition.

  • The variables created by
    LOCAL

    in a procedure are really local variables allocated on the stack frame with the lifecycle only during the procedure.

For the basic concepts and implementations of data segment and stack frame, please take a look at some textbook or MASM manual that could be worthy of several chapters without being talked here.

31. When LOCAL used in a procedure

The following is a procedure with a parameter

n

to calculate nth Fibonacci number returned in

EAX

. I let the loop counter

ECX

take over the parameter

n

. Please compare it with

FibonacciByMemory

. The logic is the same with only difference of using the local variables

pre

and

cur

here, instead of global variables

previous

and

current

in

FibonacciByMemory

.

;------------------------------------------------------------
FibonacciByLocalVariable PROC USES ecx edx, n:DWORD 
; Receives: Input n
; Returns: EAX, nth Fibonacci number
;------------------------------------------------------------
LOCAL pre, cur :DWORD

   mov   ecx,n
   mov   eax,1         
   mov   pre,0         
   mov   cur,0         
L1:
   add eax, pre      ; eax = current + previous     
   mov edx, cur 
   mov pre, edx
   mov cur, eax
 loop   L1

   ret
FibonacciByLocalVariable ENDP

The following is the code generated from the VS Disassembly window at runtime. As you can see, each line of assembly source is translated into machine code with the parameter

n

and two local variables created on the stack frame, referenced by

EBP

:

   231: ;------------------------------------------------------------
   232: FibonacciByLocalVariable PROC USES ecx edx, n:DWORD 
011713F4 55                   push        ebp  
011713F5 8B EC                mov         ebp,esp  
011713F7 83 C4 F8             add         esp,0FFFFFFF8h  
011713FA 51                   push        ecx  
011713FB 52                   push        edx  
   233: ; Receives: Input n
   234: ; Returns: EAX, nth Fibonacci number
   235: ;------------------------------------------------------------
   236: LOCAL pre, cur :DWORD
   237: 
   238:    mov   ecx,n
011713FC 8B 4D 08             mov         ecx,dword ptr [ebp+8]  
   239:    mov   eax,1         
011713FF B8 01 00 00 00       mov         eax,1  
   240:    mov   pre,0         
01171404 C7 45 FC 00 00 00 00 mov         dword ptr [ebp-4],0  
   241:    mov   cur,0         
0117140B C7 45 F8 00 00 00 00 mov         dword ptr [ebp-8],0  
   242: L1:
   243:    add eax,pre      ; eax = current + previous     
01171412 03 45 FC             add         eax,dword ptr [ebp-4]  
   244:    mov EDX, cur 
01171415 8B 55 F8             mov         edx,dword ptr [ebp-8]  
   245:    mov pre, EDX
01171418 89 55 FC             mov         dword ptr [ebp-4],edx  
   246:    mov cur, eax
0117141B 89 45 F8             mov         dword ptr [ebp-8],eax  
   247:    loop   L1
0117141E E2 F2                loop        01171412  
   248: 
   249:    ret
01171420 5A                   pop         edx  
01171421 59                   pop         ecx  
01171422 C9                   leave  
01171423 C2 04 00             ret         4  
   250: FibonacciByLocalVariable ENDP

When

FibonacciByLocalVariable

running, the stack frame can be seen as below:

Obviously, the parameter

n

is at

EBP+8

. This

add esp, 0FFFFFFF8h

just means

sub esp, 08h

moving the stack pointer

ESP

down eight bytes for two

DWORD

creation of

pre

and

cur

. Finally the

LEAVE

instruction implicitly does

mov esp, ebp
pop ebp

that moves

EBP

back to

ESP

releasing the local variables

pre

and

cur

. And this releases

n

, at

EBP+8

, for STD calling convention:

ret 4

32. When LOCAL used in a macro

To have a macro implementation, I almost copy the same code from

FibonacciByLocalVariable

. Since no

USES

for a macro, I manually use

PUSH

/

POP

for

ECX

and

EDX

. Also without a stack frame, I have to create global variables

mPre

and

mCur

on the data segment. The

mFibonacciByMacro

can be like this:

;------------------------------------------------------------
mFibonacciByMacro MACRO n
; Receives: Input n 
; Returns: EAX, nth Fibonacci number
;------------------------------------------------------------
LOCAL mPre, mCur, mL
.data
   mPre DWORD ?
   mCur DWORD ?

.code
   push ecx
   push edx

   mov   ecx,n
   mov   eax,1         
   mov   mPre,0         
   mov   mCur,0         
mL:
   add  eax, mPre      ; eax = current + previous     
   mov  edx, mCur 
   mov  mPre, edx
   mov  mCur, eax
   loop   mL

   pop edx
   pop ecx
ENDM

If you just want to call

mFibonacciByMacro

once, for example

mFibonacciByMacro 12

You don’t need

LOCAL

here. Let’s simply comment it out:

; LOCAL mPre, mCur, mL
mFibonacciByMacro

accepts the argument

12

and replace

n

with

12

. This works fine with the following listing MASM generated:

              mFibonacciByMacro 12
0000018C           1   .data
0000018C 00000000        1      mPre DWORD ?
00000190 00000000        1      mCur DWORD ?
00000000           1   .code
00000000  51           1      push ecx
00000001  52           1      push edx
00000002  B9 0000000C       1      mov   ecx,12
00000007  B8 00000001       1      mov   eax,1
0000000C  C7 05 0000018C R  1      mov   mPre,0
     00000000
00000016  C7 05 00000190 R  1      mov   mCur,0
     00000000
00000020           1   mL:
00000020  03 05 0000018C R  1      add  eax,mPre      ; eax = current + previous
00000026  8B 15 00000190 R  1      mov edx, mCur
0000002C  89 15 0000018C R  1      mov mPre, edx
00000032  A3 00000190 R     1      mov mCur, eax
00000037  E2 E7        1      loop   mL
00000039  5A           1      pop edx
0000003A  59           1      pop ecx

Nothing changed from the original code with just a substitution of

12

. The variables

mPre

and

mCur

are visible explicitly. Now let’s call it twice, like

mFibonacciByMacro 12
mFibonacciByMacro 13

This is still fine for the first

mFibonacciByMacro 12

but secondly, causes three redefinitions in preprocessing

mFibonacciByMacro 13

. Not only are data labels, i.e., variables

mPre

and

mCur

, but also complained is the code label

mL

. This is because in assembly code, each label is actually a memory address and the second label of any

mPre

,

mCur

, or

mL

should take another memory, rather than defining an already created one:

               mFibonacciByMacro 12
 0000018C           1   .data
 0000018C 00000000        1      mPre DWORD ?
 00000190 00000000        1      mCur DWORD ?
 00000000           1   .code
 00000000  51           1      push ecx
 00000001  52           1      push edx
 00000002  B9 0000000C       1      mov   ecx,12
 00000007  B8 00000001       1      mov   eax,1         
 0000000C  C7 05 0000018C R  1      mov   mPre,0         
      00000000
 00000016  C7 05 00000190 R  1      mov   mCur,0         
      00000000
 00000020           1   mL:
 00000020  03 05 0000018C R  1      add  eax,mPre      ; eax = current + previous     
 00000026  8B 15 00000190 R  1      mov edx, mCur 
 0000002C  89 15 0000018C R  1      mov mPre, edx
 00000032  A3 00000190 R     1      mov mCur, eax
 00000037  E2 E7        1      loop   mL
 00000039  5A           1      pop edx
 0000003A  59           1      pop ecx

               mFibonacciByMacro 13
 00000194           1   .data
              1      mPre DWORD ?
FibTest.32.asm(83) : error A2005:symbol redefinition : mPre
 mFibonacciByMacro(6): Macro Called From
  FibTest.32.asm(83): Main Line Code
              1      mCur DWORD ?
FibTest.32.asm(83) : error A2005:symbol redefinition : mCur
 mFibonacciByMacro(7): Macro Called From
  FibTest.32.asm(83): Main Line Code
 0000003B           1   .code
 0000003B  51           1      push ecx
 0000003C  52           1      push edx
 0000003D  B9 0000000D       1      mov   ecx,13
 00000042  B8 00000001       1      mov   eax,1         
 00000047  C7 05 0000018C R  1      mov   mPre,0         
      00000000
 00000051  C7 05 00000190 R  1      mov   mCur,0         
      00000000
              1   mL:
FibTest.32.asm(83) : error A2005:symbol redefinition : mL
 mFibonacciByMacro(17): Macro Called From
  FibTest.32.asm(83): Main Line Code
 0000005B  03 05 0000018C R  1      add  eax,mPre      ; eax = current + previous     
 00000061  8B 15 00000190 R  1      mov edx, mCur 
 00000067  89 15 0000018C R  1      mov mPre, edx
 0000006D  A3 00000190 R     1      mov mCur, eax
 00000072  E2 AC        1      loop   mL
 00000074  5A           1      pop edx
 00000075  59           1      pop ecx

To rescue, let’s turn on this:

LOCAL mPre, mCur, mL

Again, running

mFibonacciByMacro

twice with

12

and

13

, fine this time, we have:

              mFibonacciByMacro 12
0000018C           1   .data
0000018C 00000000        1      ??0000 DWORD ?
00000190 00000000        1      ??0001 DWORD ?
00000000           1   .code
00000000  51           1      push ecx
00000001  52           1      push edx
00000002  B9 0000000C       1      mov   ecx,12
00000007  B8 00000001       1      mov   eax,1
0000000C  C7 05 0000018C R  1      mov   ??0000,0
     00000000
00000016  C7 05 00000190 R  1      mov   ??0001,0
     00000000
00000020           1   ??0002:
00000020  03 05 0000018C R  1      add  eax,??0000      ; eax = current + previous
00000026  8B 15 00000190 R  1      mov edx, ??0001
0000002C  89 15 0000018C R  1      mov ??0000, edx
00000032  A3 00000190 R     1      mov ??0001, eax
00000037  E2 E7        1      loop   ??0002
00000039  5A           1      pop edx
0000003A  59           1      pop ecx

              mFibonacciByMacro 13
00000194           1   .data
00000194 00000000        1      ??0003 DWORD ?
00000198 00000000        1      ??0004 DWORD ?
0000003B           1   .code
0000003B  51           1      push ecx
0000003C  52           1      push edx
0000003D  B9 0000000D       1      mov   ecx,13
00000042  B8 00000001       1      mov   eax,1
00000047  C7 05 00000194 R  1      mov   ??0003,0
     00000000
00000051  C7 05 00000198 R  1      mov   ??0004,0
     00000000
0000005B           1   ??0005:
0000005B  03 05 00000194 R  1      add  eax,??0003      ; eax = current + previous
00000061  8B 15 00000198 R  1      mov edx, ??0004
00000067  89 15 00000194 R  1      mov ??0003, edx
0000006D  A3 00000198 R     1      mov ??0004, eax
00000072  E2 E7        1      loop   ??0005
00000074  5A           1      pop edx
00000075  59           1      pop ecx

Now the label names,

mPre

,

mCur

, and

mL

, are not visible. Instead, running the first of

mFibonacciByMacro 12

, the preprocessor generates three system labels

??0000

,

??0001

, and

??0002

for

mPre

,

mCur

, and

mL

. And for the second

mFibonacciByMacro 13

, we can find another three system generated labels

??0003

,

??0004

, and

??0005

for

mPre

,

mCur

, and

mL

. In this way, MASM resolves the redefinition issue in multiple macro executions. You must declare your labels with the

LOCAL

directive in a macro.

However, by the name

LOCAL

, the directive sounds misleading, because the system generated

??0000

,

??0001

, etc. are not limited to a macro’s context. They are really global in scope. To verify, I purposely initialize

mPre

and

mCur

as

2

and

3

:

LOCAL mPre, mCur, mL
.data
   mPre DWORD 2
   mCur DWORD 3

Then simply try to retrieve the values from

??0000

and

??0001

even before calling two

mFibonacciByMacro

in code

mov esi, ??0000
mov edi, ??0001

mFibonacciByMacro 12
mFibonacciByMacro 13

To your surprise probably, when set a breakpoint, you can enter &

??0000

into the VS debug Address box as a normal variable. As we can see here, the

??0000

memory address is

0x0116518C

with

DWORD

values

2

,

3

, and so on. Such a

??0000

is allocated on the data segment together with other properly named variables, as shown string ASCII beside:

o summarize, the

LOCAL

directive declared in a macro is to prevent data/code labels from being globally redefined.

Further, as an interesting test question, think of the following multiple running of

mFibonacciByMacro

which is working fine without need of a

LOCAL

directive in

mFibonacciByMacro

. Why?

mov ecx, 2
L1:
   mFibonacciByMacro 12
loop L1

Summary

I talked so much about miscellaneous features in assembly language programming. Most of them are from our class teaching and assignment discussion [1]. The basic practices are presented here with short code snippets for better understanding without irrelevant details involved. The main purpose is to show assembly language specific ideas and methods with more strength than other languages.

As noticed, I haven’t given a complete test code that requires a programming environment with input and output. For an easy try, you can go [2] to download the Irvine32 library and setup your MASM programming environment with Visual Studio, while you have to learn a lot in advance to prepare yourself first. For example, the statement

exit

mentioned here in

main

is not an element in assembly language, but is defined as

INVOKE ExitProcess,0

there.

Assembly language is notable for its one-to-one correspondence between an instruction and its machine code as shown in several listings here. Via assembly code, you can get closer to the heart of the machine, such as registers and memory. Assembly language programming often plays an important role in both academic study and industry development. I hope this article could serve as an useful reference for students and professionals as well.

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