From: iverson AT lionheart DOT com (Tim Iverson) Subject: Re: Assembler 6 Aug 1997 02:10:17 -0700 Approved: cygnus DOT gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com Distribution: cygnus Message-ID: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Original-To: rhino AT tfs DOT net (Stephen P. Green) Original-Cc: gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com In-Reply-To: <33E7EF73.121AB62E@tfs.net> from "Stephen P. Green" at Aug 5, 97 10:28:51 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25] Original-Sender: owner-gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com The quick reply is, "Yes, gas is the GNU assembler and it works just fine." Now for the longer version ... I find several of your comments more than a little humorous. Personally, I'd never hire any programmer for systems (driver or kernel) or embedded programming that couldn't skillfully write an assembly routine at need. It is a vital skill in many areas of business. Also, for which processor do you want to write in assembly? I would assume that you intend to target the i386 family since you're asking the question of the gnu-win32 mailing list. I would strongly urge you to learn assembly for any general purpose, non-RISC, CPU (eg. PDP-11/70, Motorola 68K family, etc.) instead for your first try. The intel x86 family is more of a special purpose stack processor and as such you will miss out on learning many of the more common constructions used by more general CPUs. Of course, there is a large market for x86 assembly programmers, so learning it is far from a waste of time. Just remember that Intel is one of the weird ones, so what you learn may not carry well to the rest of the world. Lastly, if you're going to learn Intel assembly, DO NOT USE GAS! Use just about any other commercial or PD assembler instead. Gas was never intended for humans, though it can be made to serve if you preprocess with cpp and/or m4. It's syntax is also different than every other Intel assembler in existence. Your knowledge won't carry anywhere. Oh, btw, you will want to pick up a copy of the CPU reference manual for your target CPU. And for examples, it's far better to look at assembly written by a human (even bad assembly ;-) than to look at compiler output. - Tim Iverson iverson AT cisco DOT com +---------------- | Date: Tue, 05 Aug 1997 22:28:51 -0500 | From: "Stephen P. Green" | To: "gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com" | Subject: Assembler | | I am interested in learning assembly language. I know this is almost a | completely dead language, but I find it intringing. I have two | questions: First is their any assembler included in the b18 release, or | any unix gnu assembler that could be ported(please include a link if it | has already been done or any other programs that might serve the same | purpose) and Secondly, any literature that you could point me to as a | good starting point. I know that this request is a little bit of a | deviation from our normal topic, but I beg you to show me a little | patience and help me. Thanks to you all... - For help on using this list (especially unsubscribing), send a message to "gnu-win32-request AT cygnus DOT com" with one line of text: "help".