Computer Organization and

Assembly Language
Week 7
Lecture 06: Assembly language fundamentals
Instructor: Engr. Iqra Saleem
Email: [email protected]
UNIVERSITY OF HARIPUR
Integer constants

• Optional leading + or – sign

• Binary, decimal, hexadecimal and octal digits
• Common radix characters:
-h-hexadecimal
-d-decimal
-b-binary
Examples: 30d, 6Ah, 1101b, 42
• Hexadecimal beginning with letter: 0A5h
Reserved Words

There are different type of reserved words:

• Instruction mnemonics: such as MOV, ADD and MUL
• Register names
• Directives which tell MASM how to assemble programs
• Attributes which provide size and usage information for variables and
operands. Examples are byte and word.
• Operators used in constant expressions.
• Predefined symbols such as @data which return constant integer
values
Identifier

• Identifier is a programmer-chosen name.

• It might identify a variable, constant, procedure or a code label.
Keep the following in mind when creating identifiers:
• They may contain between 1 and 247 characters.
• They are not case sensitive
• The first character must be a letter (A….z), underscore (_). @, ? Or $.
• The @ symbol is used extensively by the assembler as a prefix for
predefined symbols, so avoid it in your own identifiers.
• An identifier cannot be the same as an assembler reserved word.
Directives

• A directive is a command embedded in the source code that is

recognized and acted upon by the assembler.
• Directives do not execute at run time.
• Directives can define variables, macros and procedures.
• They can assign names to memory segments.
• In MASM, directives are case insensitive.
• For example it recognizes .data, .DATA, .Data equivalent.
Directives

The following example helps to show the difference between directives

and instructions
• The DWORD directive tells the assembles to reserve space in the
program for a doubleword variable.
• The MOV instruction executes at runtime, copying the contents of
myVAR to EAX register:
• myVar DWORD 26 \\ DWORD directive
• Mov eax, myVar \\ MOV instruction
 Directives
Segments
• One important function of assembler directives is to defines program
sections or segments
• The .data directive identifies the area of a program containing
variables.
• The .code directive identifies the area of a program containing
executable instaructions.
• The .data directive identifies the area of a program holding the
runtime stack, setting its size.
Instructions

• An instruction is a statement that becomes executable when a program is

assembled.
• Instructions are translated by the assembler into machine language bytes, which are
loaded and executed by the CPU at runtime.
An instruction contains four basic parts:
Label (optional)
Instruction mnemonic (required)
Operands (usually reqired)
Comments (optional)
This is the basic syntax:
[label:] mnemonic [operands] [;comments]
 Instructions
label
• A label is an identifier that acts as a place marker for instructions and data.
• A label place just before an instruction implies the instruction address.
• Similarly, a label place just before a variable implies the variable’s address.
• Data labels: A data label identifies the location of a variable, providing a convenient way to
reference the variable in code.
• count DWORD 100
• Code labels: A label in the code area of a program (where instructions are located) must end
with a colon (:) charcutier.
• Code labels are used as targets of jumping and looping instructions.
Target:
Mov ax, bx
…..
Jmp target
 Instructions
Instruction mnemonic
• An instruction mnemonic is a short word that identifies an instruction.
• Mov: assign one value to another
• Add: add two values
• Sub: subtract two values
• Mul: multiply two values
• Jmp: jump to a new location
• Call: call a procedure
 Instructions
Operands
• Assembly language instructions can have between zero and three
operands, that can be register, memory operand, constant expression,
or input-output port.
• A memory operand is specified by the name of a variable or by one or
more registers containing the address of variable
• The STC instruction, for example, has no operands, stc: set carry flag.
 Instructions
Operands
• The INC instruction has one operand
Inc eax: add 1 to eax
• The mov instruction has two operands
Mov count, ebx: mov ebx to count
• In two operand instruction, the first operand is destination and the second
operand is the source,
• The IMUL instruction has 3 operands in which the first operand is the
destination and the following two operands are the source operands
Imul eax, ebx, 5
• In this case, ebx is multiplied by 5 and the product is stored in the eax register.
 Datatypes

• It specifies which type of value a variable can hold.

• It allow you to allocate memory and initialize it with specific values of different sizes,
suitable for various data types and operations.
Common data types include:
• DB (Define Byte),1 byte
• DW (Define Word), 2byte
• DD (Define Doubleword), 4 byte
• DQ (Define quadword), 8 byte
• DT (Define Terabyte) ,10 byte
Important points
• V1 db 50 (stores ASCII i.e ‘2’)
• V2 db ‘50’ (stores number ‘50’)
• V3 db ‘A’
• V4 db ? (run time declaration)
• V5 db ‘hello$’ (strings always terminated by $ sign)
For working with variables in code segment:
.
code
Main proce
Mov ax,@data
Mov ds,ax
Mov dl,v1
Mov ah,2
Int 21h
Important points
Runtime declaration:
//varname datatype ?(in data section)

Mov bl,5
Mov v4,bl
For printing strings:
//V5 db ‘hello$’

Mov dx,offset v5
Mov ah,9
OR
Lea dx,v5 (load effective address)
Symbolic constants
• Symbolic constants are named values that remain constant throughout
the program, making the code more readable and easier to maintain .
• Do not use storage
• No datatype
• Can be defined in .code and .data segment
• count=500
• +,-,/,* operators with constants
 Variables

• Variables are used to store data that can be accessed and change during the
program's execution.
• Variables are typically defined in the data segment and can be of various sizes,
such as bytes, words, or double words.
• Use storage
• Equal sign is not used with variables
Equal sign directive “=”

• Use to define the symbolic constants.

• Some assemblers may have specific keywords or directives for defining symbolic
constants, such as EQU or DEFINE.
• count =1 , zero=2
• Always use integer value after equal sign.
Examples of EQU keyword

• Assembly
Example 1:
NUM_BYTES EQU 1024
Defines symbolic constant NUM_BYTES with value 1024.
Example 2:
True EQU 1
False EQU 0
Define symbolic constants True and False with values 1 and 0 respectively