From:	Martin Str|mberg <ams AT father DOT ludd DOT luth DOT se>
Newsgroups:	comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject:	Re: Assembler smal question
Date:	Sun, 6 May 2001 08:34:28 +0000 (UTC)
Organization:	University of Lulea, Sweden
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Alexei A. Frounze <dummy_addressee AT hotmail DOT com> wrote:
: Second thing is that GCC doesn't support native for x86 CPU assembly
: language syntax but instead it supports AT&T syntax wich is more complicated
: and I guess it's still in use in GNU software due to compatibility reasons
: and is not very good to write assembly stuff in it.

I object to that statement. AT&T syntax is not more complicated. It's
actually more consistent than what Intel came up with. E. g. it has
it's "mov" operands in the right order. If Intel wanted a load
mnemonic they should have used "ld" not "mov". And to use suffixes on
the mnenonics to show what size the operand is is a lot better than
sprinkling "byte", "word" or "byte ptr" randomly among the operands.

Now I can understand why someone brough up with TASM or MASM think
it's more difficult than what your used to, but if you without
prejudice try to go the other way you'll find that AT&T syntax is lot
better.

So it depends on what you're used to.

Now for some really good points in favout of AT&T:

If you learn gcc's assembler syntax, you'll have no problems writing
code for another processor architecture than x86.

gcc's inline assember syntax is miles ahead of what you can do with
bcc. You can tell the compiler exactly what register it clobbers
e. g.. I'm not good at bcc so perhaps this possibility exists there as
well, but if so they hid the documentation saying how to do that
pretty well.


Right,

						MartinS

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