Is there an easier way of getting the address of a local variable than using the lea instruction? Something like the addr operator in masm.

Hi.

I don't know about masm, but the local variables are in the stack and the ebp points to the end of the local block (stack frame). So the address of local variable is not constant and may be changed during different runs of the procedure. So there is no other way to get the address of the variable, but lea instruction. Note that you need the address of the local variable only if you want to use it as argument to another function. For other purposes you may use simply:

Regards

Address of local variables?

lea eax, [ebp-8]

Thanks for replying I guess I'll just use the lea instruction then. I'm a fan of local variables. I like my executables to be as small as possible so I don't want to store too much data in the data section. But I'm not sure that this is the right approach to take. A lot of api functions require the address of data and if i use local variables too much I'll be using the lea instruction a lot. Is this a bad way to write code when declaring the variable in the data section would negate the need for the lea instruction?

[code]
lea eax, [ebp-imm8] ; 3 bytes
push eax ; 1 byte
------------
total: 4 bytes


push imm32 ; 5 bytes.

Using local variables results 1 instruction more, but 1 byte less.

Ok thats interesting That eases my conscience a bit. So I can safely conclude that its a good idea to use local variables then

Hopefully your local variable can fit into 127bytes if not the instruction would be longer.

Well, you are right, but using local variables is good mainly not because of smaller size. It's good programming practice for every language, including assembly (or maybe particularly for assembly), especially in big projects. Using local variables make program more clear and readable and helps preventing bugs.

You can use ADDR operator with variant of invoke macro from the "win32ax.inc" include.