Hello all!
So far I've just gotten my toes wet with FASM, but I like what I see!
Smeone tells me that MASM is able to assemble code for the flat memory system of the latest CPUs. Is that true?

Can you tell me the names of other "flat" assemblers which can produce "Windows" executables?

How does FASM compare with MASM in your opinion -
power programming features;
compatibility with Win environments;
size of executable;
speed of executable.

Thanks in advance!
Mike
27th Nov.,2003

NASM: < http://sourceforge.net/projects/nasm >

RosAsm: < http://betov.free.fr/RosAsm.html >

GoAsm: < http://www.godevtool.com/index.html >


Betov.


PS. MASM is the worst available Assembler:

- It is MicroSoft.
- Very slow (at least 20 times slower than FASM, RosAsm, GoAsm).
- Its syntax is very faultive and pushes to error writing.
- It is not a true Assembler (does not output what you write, pushes to C-Like programming Methods).
- It is not Open Source.
- EULA License (illegal under non M$ OSes).
- You have no guaranty it will be maintained in a close futur.

Masm is the most popular assembler for windows . Most of the source code and tutorials available on the internet (like iczelion's tutorials ) are for masm.

You can also take a look at lzasm. It's compatible with tasm ideal mode I hear . More info at http://lzasm.hotbox.ru/

Also HLA, written by Randall Hyde, author of "The Art of Assembly Language Programming"

Found at http://webster.cs.ucr.edu/Page_hla/0_hla_dnld.html

All assemblers are mutually different in some aspect or other. However, among all of these you should find one that you can use.

In terms of available printed and internet content, HLA has the greatest volume of material explaining and demonstrating writing a program and using the many powerful features.

MASM32 is the oldest, and has therefore the greatest following - this means there are more people available to help you. Iczelions tutorials, considered a standard by many, were written for MASM, but have been translated, for example, for other assemblers, eg. HLA. Some consider MASM to be doomed to abandonment by Microsoft, which would mean less upgrades likely, but at least for now, it is a very viable choice too.

FASM is another excellent choice, again with different strengths. Compared to MASM32, FASM is very well supported by its author, and new features are being added to make it even more powerful.

Experiment a bit with all, decide what features are most important to you, and go for it.

That's just a bit biased and oppinionated.
No assembler "exactly" outputs what you input. But that's besides the point, that's not the definition of an assembler.

Very few guranties are worth their weight, expescially in something like this. Maintenance and support would be a direct link with the user base, which in itself flucuates over time which makes guranties....."iffy"

But you did forget to mention MASM is the most popular which will indicate further maintenance, and a very good support system. Aka. www.masmforum.com

The supporting referred here is for the assembler itself ie. bugs, features, new approaches.
masmforum cannot maintain ml.exe because they did not have control over it (sources nor copyright)

The right place for discussing about the best assembler is here http://www.masmforum.com/forum.php?f=6&sid=1e30f21908d75da606554aab29c17033

Good point heh

Then again, Microsoft has done a pretty good job of maintaining MASM up to this point. Granted, you don't see new versions every month, but then, MASM has been fairly stable for quite some time now. Note that they are up to version 8 these days (though most people are still using MASM 6).

Yep. MASM still has some bugs. But in my experience, it has far fewer bugs than most other assemblers, so the need for support isn't quite as great as it has been in the past.

Having said all that, I do believe it's pretty clear that Microsoft is phasing MASM out and over the next decade they will probably stop supporting it completely. Indeed, it only exists today because of the need to assemble certain device drivers for Windows (if the rumors are correct).

I wouldn't go as far as to say that it's unwise to use MASM because it has a limited future, but support is definitely on the decline for that product.

OTOH, *every* other assembler I'm aware of today that is even slightly popular is being maintained by an individual (e.g., FASM) or an internet team (e.g., Gas and NASM). There is certainly no guarantee of support on any of these products, either (e.g., the author could be killed in an auto accident). The fact that the code is open-source doesn't mean it will get actively supported -- look at what happened to NASM after the original authors got tired of it; it's been languishing for quite some time (lots of noise about support for it, but when *is* v1.0 going to arrive?).

So unless you've got the sources and you're willing to maintain it yourself, support isn't guaranteed for *any* assembler.
Cheers,
Randy Hyde

Yes, you said it right sources are the guarantee !
This IS the main reason I got stick with Fasm. Right now, for my own needs, I manage to obtain working binaries from my sources with current Fasm version. If I need something additional, I am able to add it to Fasm and keep it going as long as I need it.

Regards,
pelaillo

fasm is better than MASM because:

executables are shorter than from MASM;
source and debug is similar to itself (true assembling);
no installation needed;
fasm require small disk space;
full source and (Jurek Owsiak- Róbta co chceta) you can do everthing you want;
multi platform(no EULA)- one syntax(win,dos,linux,menuet);
different format outputs (coff,ms-coff,elf,exe,pe, raw binary, dll);

No installation is needed for MASM other than copying ml.exe and ml.err to an appropriate directory.
Cheers,
Randy Hyde