Re: [Nasm-users] learning asm

[Jakob B. <jb...@wi...>]

On 13-10-2010 01:47, Tyler Littlefield wrote:
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> Hello all,
> I'm looking for a few things, and maybe someone can help me out some.
> I've been toying with asm for a while, but I'd really like to dive in.
> One of my problems is proper information on what things like enter and
> leave do, etc. Is there a good reference somewhere?
The canonical reference that most of us use is to go to for example

<http://www.intel.com/p/en_US/products/server/processor/xeon5000/technical-documents#13>

and download the bunch of .pdf files whose names start with "Intel 64 
and IA-32 Architectures...", especially volume 2A and 2B.  For a few 
details, you may want to also grab the similar documents from AMD to
check the differences.

These contain detailed descriptions of each instruction, what it does,
what can go wrong etc. etc.  The style and layout has been the same 
since the 8086 manual in the late 1970s.

These come in new versions every 1 or 2 years to include the latest new
features.

> I'm also curious of the output of a .lst file, and how it's organized:
> There don't seem to be column headers, so I'm having issues figuring out
> what's what with my reader.

The format of listing files has mostly been the same since the mainframe 
days:  First column is the memory address where the code goes
(relative to where it ends up after nasm has finished), next column is
the actual instruction or data bytes that go at that address, and 
finally there is the source code for those bytes.

Various flag characters in the first two columns indicate such 
variations as if the bytes will have their values changed according to 
where this or some other code is loaded, if this is actual code/data or 
just a structure layout or other definition for use elsewhere etc.

> Also, are there some good nasm samples out there to play with? Iseen a
> text editor, but that might just confuse me, then confuse me again.
>
Sorry, I don't know what nasm-format samples are available.