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Index > Compiler Internals > what's the use of coding things like "dword eax"?

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MCD



Joined: 21 Aug 2004
Posts: 602
Location: Germany
MCD 29 Oct 2007, 16:01
In current fasm (1.67.23) you can write things like
Code:
mov eax,dword ebx
    

Does that make sense?

also, you can write
Code:
mov eax,word ebx
    

which will generate an "operand sizes do not match" error.

Tomasz:
What if we disallow the usage of size prefixes before registers, would that make fasm's code more complicated or could we even drop some code?

I mean, both examples are nonsense, the first one because register sizes are implicit, the second one because register sizes are fixed.
Post 29 Oct 2007, 16:01
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vid
Verbosity in development


Joined: 05 Sep 2003
Posts: 7105
Location: Slovakia
vid 29 Oct 2007, 16:12
I think extra explicitness isn't a problem. You could use same argument for "mov eax, dword [abcd]".
Post 29 Oct 2007, 16:12
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edfed



Joined: 20 Feb 2006
Posts: 4347
Location: Now
edfed 29 Oct 2007, 17:08
i think it is for coders that are used to other asm compilers

but in fact this is not really usefull

twobytes db 0,1
db 2,3
mov eax,dword[twobytes]

this is usefull to override the size of the label, and by evidence, tomasz didn't see any problem to let the user writing explicit sizes in instructions
in my case it's really not a problem, i focus my mind on coding, not on compiler features

if you don't understand why you can write
mov eax,dword ebx
it's only because for compiler, the operands are threaded one by one, so, if you see mov, then it's a mov instruction, if you see eax, it's the eax register the destination, if you see dword, it means that the following operand size is a dword, even if it's not a dword
if you see ebx, it means that the source is ebx

there is no reason to add a test to see if there is need or not of dword like statement
it's to the coder to make this
Post 29 Oct 2007, 17:08
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bitRAKE



Joined: 21 Jul 2003
Posts: 4050
Location: vpcmpistri
bitRAKE 01 Nov 2007, 16:05
Sometimes macros are used without restiction on operand type, but limiting to dword size. Such instances would be more difficult to code without the ability to overstate implicit sizes.
Post 01 Nov 2007, 16:05
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