If I do:

proc a
local blah:DWORD
...
ret
endp

then blah is located on the stack and is discarded when the procedure returns.

Now if I do:

proc b
jmp @F
blah dd 0
@@:
...
ret
endp

then blah is in heap and is global to other procedures.

But then if I do:

proc c
jmp @F
.blah dd 0
@@:
...
ret
endp

then .blah appears to be local to the procedure as in proc a example.

Question:
In proc c example, is .blah also located on the stack and discarded when the procedure returns?

Chris

first of all: you can't name procedure just "c"
but this may be also problem in macro

ChrisLeslie: The name of a variable has nothing to do with where it's located. Putting a . before its name makes it local, but this is just a matter of scope (where you can access it from). In both your second and third examples the variable is statically allocated.

This mean it's neither on the stack nor on the heap, but "inside, bertween" your actual code, which is very strange for C-asm beginners to understand.

Subsequent testing shows that "proc b' and "proc c" do infact retain the old values in "blah" upon reentry to the procedure. Therefore "blah" is static for both, but static and local for "proc c".

vid - The name "proc c" is just hypothetical for the discussion.

Chris

chrisleslie: starting label name with "." only makes NAME local (to last non-local name), not content addressed by that label.



this is all that "." does.

Chris: if you are C coder, you may think of it this way:

- label not starting with "." defines namespace
- label starting with "." is local symbol in namespace. It's name is appended to namespace, so ".x" in namespace "AAA" becomes "AAA.x".

And if you need some local variables on the stack, you must use some esp/rsp modifying code either by yourself or use a macro or that