FASM vocabulary

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vid
Verbosity in development

Joined: 05 Sep 2003
Posts: 7105
Location: Slovakia

vid

i noticed there's a problem with vocabulary... there are not standard terms for some things, or people don't know these terms. So i tried to put problematic terms together. Let us know if i missed something or you dislike some term...

[edit]maybe we could even complete some lists (like special symbols...)[/edit]

haha, master.slave, .a_b etc. are symbols
(, :, \ etc. are special symbols
'aaaa' or "12345" is quoted string
123, 0B800h are numbers
;anything is comment
\ at the end of line or immediately before comment is line break

db, label, include, etc. are directives
include, rept, macro, equ, etc. are preprocessor directives
rd, if, file, = etc. are assembler directives

byte, >=, eq, ptr etc. are operators
byte, word, dword, etc. are size operators
+, *, div, shr are numeric operators
>=, <>, &, eq, defined are logical operators (sometimes called relational operators)

mov ax, 10 is instruction, in this example
mov is instruction mnemonic
ax and 10 are instruction operands (or instruction arguments)
rep is example of instruction prefix

[0B800h], ptr ebx, [ss:ebx+4*edi+8] are memory addresses, in this example:
ss: is called segment prefix
ebx is called base
4* is called scale
edi is called index
+8 is called displacement

a equ 5 defines equate
define a 5 defines equate too
5 is then value of equate
when a is substituted by 5 we say that equate a was replaced
we restore equate with restore a
a fix 5 define fix (or we say that symbol a is fixed to 5)
we unfix fix with fix a a
(in official manual equate and fix are commonly called symbolic constants)

<name>: and label <name> ... define label.
label starting with dot, like .ret, .a.b, is called local label
definition of non-local label also defines namespace <name>
a = <value> define numeric constant
a, a + b, (a shl 2)+b, 1, 1+5 are numeric expressions (regardless if "a" is label or numeric constant)

macro <name> <args> { <body } define macro (it is macro definition), where:
<name> is macro name
<args> are macro aguments
<body> is macro body
macro is then used with line containing name <arg_values>
when macro is used, it is expanded by preprocessor
symbol inside macro body preceded by \ is called escaped symbol

Last edited by vid on 06 Jul 2006, 09:36; edited 8 times in total

31 Jan 2006, 17:50

vid
Verbosity in development

Joined: 05 Sep 2003
Posts: 7105
Location: Slovakia

vid

can we say that "equ" overdefines equate and "define" redefines equate?

23 Feb 2006, 00:48

Tomasz Grysztar

Joined: 16 Jun 2003
Posts: 7734
Location: Kraków, Poland

Tomasz Grysztar

What's the reason behing such calling?
BTW: note that fasm's EQU is basically the same thing as XDEFINE in NASM.

23 Feb 2006, 06:23

vid
Verbosity in development

Joined: 05 Sep 2003
Posts: 7105
Location: Slovakia

vid

if you want to differ in text that you need to "equ"-define or "define"-define symbolic consant. but maybe it's really not needed...

23 Feb 2006, 08:56

UCM

Joined: 25 Feb 2005
Posts: 285
Location: Canada

UCM

aren't "div" and "shr" instruction mnemonics?

23 Feb 2006, 21:34

vid
Verbosity in development

Joined: 05 Sep 2003
Posts: 7105
Location: Slovakia

vid

i thought that too...

24 Feb 2006, 04:40

MazeGen

Joined: 06 Oct 2003
Posts: 977
Location: Czechoslovakia

MazeGen

According to the context, they are either mnemonics or operators.

24 Feb 2006, 07:18

Tomasz Grysztar

Joined: 16 Jun 2003
Posts: 7734
Location: Kraków, Poland

Tomasz Grysztar

"div" is only a mnemonic, "shr", "shl", "and", "or", "xor" and "not" are both mnemonics and operators (after TASM). There is also "mod" which is operator, but not mnemonic.

24 Feb 2006, 10:34

vid
Verbosity in development

Joined: 05 Sep 2003
Posts: 7105
Location: Slovakia

vid

so is it "mnemonics" or "mnemonic" ???

24 Feb 2006, 13:18

Plue

Joined: 15 Dec 2005
Posts: 151

Plue

\ at the end of line or immediately before comment is a line continuation character

one mnemonic
two or more mnemonics

24 Feb 2006, 18:56

vid
Verbosity in development

Joined: 05 Sep 2003
Posts: 7105
Location: Slovakia

vid

Quote:

when macro is used, it is "expanded" by preprocessor

i still lack some proper term for this...

30 Aug 2006, 08:17

Madis731

Joined: 25 Sep 2003
Posts: 2140
Location: Estonia

Madis731

I think it is somewhat related to unpacking - it has an algorithm that gets defined by the macro itself. How about "extracted" by the preprocessor or maybe "translated" like in edcrypting or language-translation.

30 Aug 2006, 09:19

vid
Verbosity in development

Joined: 05 Sep 2003
Posts: 7105
Location: Slovakia

vid

nice ideas... but i think that ours Dungeon Master should decide Razz

30 Aug 2006, 09:31

f0dder

Joined: 19 Feb 2004
Posts: 3170
Location: Denmark

f0dder

"macro expansion" would be the term normally used...

30 Aug 2006, 11:25

ChrisLeslie

Joined: 04 Jun 2006
Posts: 50
Location: Australia

ChrisLeslie

I think that Tomasz should take the hint that it is a good idea to tabulate all such definitions in one place somewhere near the begining of the manual.

Good on you vid! as the FASM product will be greatly enhanced and popularised by more well defined documentation.

Chris

30 Aug 2006, 22:23

f0dder

Joined: 19 Feb 2004
Posts: 3170
Location: Denmark

f0dder

ChrisLeslie wrote:

I think that Tomasz should take the hint that it is a good idea to tabulate all such definitions in one place somewhere near the begining of the manual.

Or at the end, as an appendix - I personally think that'd be better.

_________________

- carpe noctem

30 Aug 2006, 23:21

vid
Verbosity in development

Joined: 05 Sep 2003
Posts: 7105
Location: Slovakia

vid

okay, for now i am calling it "expansion"

fodder: btw, WHERE is it used aside FASM?

31 Aug 2006, 05:01

UCM

Joined: 25 Feb 2005
Posts: 285
Location: Canada

UCM

C, C++, (almost) all other assemblers Wink

31 Aug 2006, 12:44

f0dder

Joined: 19 Feb 2004
Posts: 3170
Location: Denmark

f0dder

vid: masm, nasm, (other assemblers), C/C++ preprocessors all do macro expansion. Pascal doesn't Smile

31 Aug 2006, 13:13

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