Tutorial: Creating text files with FASM

You don't have to write assembler programs in FASM; you can create any kind of file (e.g. text files).

Enter the following code in "MyText.asm":

Code:

; MyText.asm
db 'First line', 0Dh, 0Ah
db 'Second line'

Then run:

Code:

fasm MyText.asm MyText.txt

At least you know what your line separators are Wink

But FASM can be seen as a text templating engine as well. Suppose you want to add a ruler to a document whereby you want to be able to determine the position of each letter in each paragraph:

Code:

times 7 db '         ', %+30h
db 0dh, 0ah
times 7 db '----+----+'
db 0dh, 0ah
db 'This is the first paragraph.', 0dh, 0ah
db 'This is the second one.'

The result will be:

Code:

         1         2         3         4         5         6         7
----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
This is the first paragraph.
This is the second one.

If you want to create a 5x5 grid into which to put single characters, try this:

Code:

N=5
l=1 
while l<=N+1 
      c=1 
      while c<=N 
            times 4 db '-'
            c=c+1 
      end while 
      db '-' 
      db 0dh,0ah 
      if l<N+1 
            c=1 
            while c<=N 
                  db '|   '
                  c=c+1 
            end while 
            db '|' 
      end if 
      db 0dh,0ah 
      l=l+1 
end while

The grid document should be as follows:

Code:

---------------------
|   |   |   |   |   |
---------------------
|   |   |   |   |   |
---------------------
|   |   |   |   |   |
---------------------
|   |   |   |   |   |
---------------------
|   |   |   |   |   |
---------------------

Doesn't look good, so we add some joints (as + signs):

Code:

N=5
l=1  
while l<=N+1  
      c=1  
      while c<=N 
            db '+' 
            times 3 db '-'
            c=c+1  
      end while  
      db '+' 
      db 0dh,0ah  
      if l<N+1  
            c=1  
            while c<=N  
                  db '|   '
                  c=c+1  
            end while  
            db '|'  
      end if  
      db 0dh,0ah  
      l=l+1  
end while

This is the new grid:

Code:

+---+---+---+---+---+
|   |   |   |   |   |
+---+---+---+---+---+
|   |   |   |   |   |
+---+---+---+---+---+
|   |   |   |   |   |
+---+---+---+---+---+
|   |   |   |   |   |
+---+---+---+---+---+
|   |   |   |   |   |
+---+---+---+---+---+