is this some c code ?

[Slartibartfast]

Whatever next? Object-oriented assembly language with an in-built
garbage collector? (Anyone want to guess which language that garbage
collector would then be written in?)

<OT>
Ever seen an ARM9 with the Jazelle java accelerator? It's not so far
from what you describe!
</OT>

 

[Joona I Palaste]

There have been some "high level" assemblers providing such constructs
in order to reduce the amount of spaghetti in the source code. I guess
no true assembly programmer would use such a thing, but some vendors
tried their hands at selling them.

Righty-ho. I forgot assembler was a different thing from raw machine
code. However, it's not *MUCH* different. IMHO there should be a 1-1
correspondence between an assembler instruction and the generated
machine code instruction. But YOMBD.

 

[Dan Pop]

Righty-ho. I forgot assembler was a different thing from raw machine
code. However, it's not *MUCH* different. IMHO there should be a 1-1
correspondence between an assembler instruction and the generated
machine code instruction. But YOMBD.

Such a correspondence ceased to exist by the time macroassemblers have
been introduced, long before you were born.

A more accurate definition is that it is possible to control each
generated instruction from an assembly source code.

But even then, there are assemblers that can automatically fix
programmer mistakes: an out of range branch can be replaced by a short
branch on the opposite condition and a jump to the desired label.
I've used such an assembler as the back end of a C compiler that didn't
bother to check the validity of its generated branches (DECUS C on the
PDP-11).

Dan