Inline Assembly in VC++ and gcc

Introduction

Inline Assembly is different in VC++ and gcc. VC uses Intel syntax while gcc uses AT&T syntax. Here we define the difference in syntax of AT&T and Intel's assembly.

Source and Destination Ordering

In AT&T syntax the source is always on the left, and the destination is always on the right which is opposite of the Intel's syntax.

	AT&T	Intel
Move ebx to eax	movl %ebx, %eax	mov eax, ebx
Move 100 to ebx	Movl $100, %ebx	Mov ebx, 100

Prefixes/Suffixes for register naming and Immediate Values

Register names are prefixed with "%" in AT&T while in Intel syntax they are referenced as is. In AT&T syntax $ is prefixed to all the immediate values while no prefix is required in Intel's format. In Intel syntax hexadecimal or binary immediate data are suffixed with 'h' and 'b' respectively. Also if the first hexadecimal digit is a letter then a '0' prefixes the value.
In AT&T the instructions are suffixed by b, w, or l, depending on whether the operand is a byte, word, or long. This is not mandatory as GCC tries to provide the appropriate suffix by reading the operands. But it is recommended to provide the suffixes as it improves code readability and it prevents compiler from making a mistake while guessing. The equivalent forms for Intel is byte ptr, word ptr, and dword ptr only when referencing memory

	AT&T	Intel
Registers	%eax %ebx %ecx %edx	eax ebx ecx edx
Move ebx to eax	movl %ebx, %eax	mov eax, ebx
Move FF in ebx	movl $0xff,%ebx	mov ebx, 0ffh

Accessing variables from inside Inline ASM

For accessing values of global variables an underscore has to be prefixed in both cases. Lets say x is a global or static variable. In Intel's format _x gives pointer to the variable while [_x] gives its value. In AT&T format $_x gives the pointer while _x gives the value of the variable. This works only for global variables. Local variables can be accessed using the stack pointer. In GCC, extended inline assembly can be used to have variables preloaded into registers and the result of your assembly operations stored into variables. (Extended ASM in GCC will be discussed in my next article).

	AT&T	Intel
Load value of x in eax	movl _x, %eax	mov eax, [_x]
Load pointer to x in ebx	movl $_x, %ebx	mov ebx, _x

Accessing Local Variables

Local variables as well as function parameters are allocated on the stack. In inline asm you can access those local variables either using frame pointer register(ebp) or directly the stack pointer.
Local variables are on the negative side of the stack pointer while function parameters are on the positive side of the stack pointer. Space for local variables is reserved on the stack in the order that they are declared.
Parameters are pushed onto the stack from right to left and are referenced relative to the base pointer (ebp) at four byte intervals beginning with a displacement of 8
Lets see an example
For the following C function

void doNothing(int a, int b)
{
int y = 5;
int z = 9;
y += b;
z += a;
return;
}

Following asm code is generated by the compiler (without optimizations)

_doNothing:
pushl %ebp
movl %esp, %ebp
subl $8, %esp
movl $5, -4(%ebp)
movl $9, -8(%ebp)
movl 12(%ebp), %edx
leal -4(%ebp), %eax
addl %edx, (%eax)
movl 8(%ebp), %edx
leal -8(%ebp), %eax
addl %edx, (%eax)
leave
ret

The stack looks something like this

z	-8
	-7
	-6
	-5
y	-4
	-3
	-2
	-1
	ebp
	1
	2
	3
	4
	5
	6
	7
a	8
	9
	10
	11
b	12
	13
	14
	15

Following asm code is generated if we tell compiler not to use ebp (-fomit-frame-pointer)

_doNothing:
subl $8, %esp
movl $5, 4(%esp)
movl $9, (%esp)
movl 16(%esp), %edx
leal 4(%esp), %eax
addl %edx, (%eax)
movl 12(%esp), %edx
movl %esp, %eax
addl %edx, (%eax)
addl $8, %esp
ret

In this case stack looks something like this

z	esp
	1
	2
	3
y	4
	5
	6
	7
	8
	9
	10
	11
a	12
	13
	14
	15
b	16
	17
	18
	19

Referencing memory

The format for 32-bit addressing in Intel syntax is segreg: [base + index * scale + immed32] while the same in AT&T syntax is segreg: immed32 (base, index, scale). The formula to calculate the address is (immed32 + base + index * scale) in the segment pointed by segment register. You can use 386-protected mode to just use eax, ebx, ecx, edx, edi, esi as six general purpose registers (ignoring the segment register). ebp can also be used as a general purpose register if -fomit-frame-pointer option is used while compiling.

	AT&T	Intel
Addressing a global variable	_x	[_x]
De-Referencing a pointer in a register	(%eax)	[eax]
Array of integers	_array (,%eax, 4)	[eax*4 + array]
Addressing a variable offset by a value in a register	_x(%eax)	[eax + _x]
Addressing a variable offset by an immediate value assuming that variable is stored in eax	1(%eax)	[eax + 1]

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