Introduction xxix
 
Chapter 1 It's All in the Plan 1
 
Another Pleasant Valley Saturday 1
 
Had This Been the Real Thing 5
 
Assembly Language Programming As a Square Dance 5
 
Assembly Language Programming As a Board Game 6
 
Chapter 2 Alien Bases 11
 
The Return of the New Math Monster 11
 
Octal: How the Grinch Stole Eight and Nine 16
 
Hexadecimal: Solving the Digit Shortage 20
 
From Hex to Decimal and from Decimal to Hex 24
 
Practice. Practice! PRACTICE! 27
 
Arithmetic in Hex 28
 
Binary 34
 
Hexadecimal as Shorthand for Binary 38
 
Prepare to Compute 40
 
Chapter 3 Lifting the Hood 41
 
RAXie, We Hardly Knew Ye 41
 
Switches, Transistors, and Memory 43
 
The Shop Supervisor and the Assembly Line 54
 
The Box That Follows a Plan 58
 
What vs. How: Architecture and Microarchitecture 63
 
Enter the Plant Manager 67
 
Chapter 4 Location, Location, Location 73
 
The Joy of Memory Models 73
 
The Nature of Segments 80
 
Segment Registers 87
 
The Four Major Assembly Programming Models 95
 
64-Bit Long Mode 101
 
Chapter 5 The Right to Assemble 103
 
The Nine and Sixty Ways to Code 103
 
Files and What's Inside Them 104
 
Text In, Code Out 115
 
The Assembly Language Development Process 123
 
Linking the Object Code File 130
 
Taking a Trip Down Assembly Lane 134
 
Chapter 6 A Place to Stand, with Access to Tools 143
 
Integrated Development Environments 143
 
Introducing SASM 146
 
Linux and Terminals 153
 
Using Linux Make 164
 
Debugging with SASM 172
 
Chapter 7 Following Your Instructions 175
 
Build Yourself a Sandbox 176
 
Instructions and Their Operands 178
 
Source and Destination Operands 178
 
Rally Round the Flags, Boys! 186
 
Signed and Unsigned Values 195
 
Implicit Operands and MUL 200
 
Reading and Using an Assembly Language Reference 205
 
NEG Negate (Two's Complement; i.e., Multiply by .1) 208
 
Chapter 8 Our Object All Sublime 213
 
The Bones of an Assembly Language Program 213
 
Last In, First Out via the Stack 223
 
Using Linux Kernel Services Through Syscall 231
 
Designing a Nontrivial Program 235
 
Going Further 248
 
Chapter 9 Bits, Flags, Branches, and Tables 251
 
Bits Is Bits (and Bytes Is Bits) 251
 
Shifting Bits 258
 
Bit-Bashing in Action 262
 
Flags, Tests, and Branches 270
 
X64 Long Mode Memory Addressing in Detail 279
 
Character Table Translation 290
 
Tables Instead of Calculations 298
 
Chapter 10 Dividing and Conquering 299
 
Boxes within Boxes 300
 
Calling and Returning 309
 
Local Labels and the Lengths of Jumps 325
 
Building External Procedure Libraries 330
 
The Art of Crafting Procedures 352
 
Simple Cursor Control in the Linux Console 356
 
Creating and Using Macros 364
 
Chapter 11 Strings and Things 377
 
The Notion of an Assembly Language String 378
 
REP STOSB, the Software Machine Gun 387
 
The Semiautomatic Weapon: STOSB Without REP 392
 
MOVSB: Fast Block Copies 397
 
Storing Data to Discontinuous Strings 402
 
Command-Line Arguments, String Searches, and the Linux Stack 408
 
The Stack, Its Structure, and How to Use It 414
 
Chapter 12 Heading Out to C 423
 
What's GNU? 424