Assembly language

In computer programming, assembly language (or

assembler language),[1] sometimes abbreviated asm, is
Assembly language
any low-level programming language in which there is a
very strong correspondence between the instructions in the
language and the architecture's machine code
instructions.[2] Because assembly depends on the machine
code instructions, every assembly language is designed for
exactly one specific computer architecture. Assembly
language may also be called symbolic machine code.[3][4]

Assembly code is converted into executable machine code

by a utility program referred to as an assembler. The
conversion process is referred to as assembly, as in
assembling the source code. Assembly language usually
has one statement per machine instruction (1:1), but
comments and statements that are assembler directives,[5]
macros,[6][1] and symbolic labels of program and memory
locations are often also supported.

The term "assembler" is generally attributed to Wilkes,

Wheeler and Gill in their 1951 book The Preparation of
Programs for an Electronic Digital Computer,[7] who,
however, used the term to mean "a program that assembles
another program consisting of several sections into a single
program".[8]

Each assembly language is specific to a particular

computer architecture and sometimes to an operating Typical secondary output from an assembler—
system.[9] However, some assembly languages do not showing original assembly language (right) for
provide specific syntax for operating system calls, and the
Motorola MC6800 and the assembled form
most assembly languages can be used universally with any
operating system, as the language provides access to all Paradigm Imperative, unstructured
the real capabilities of the processor, upon which all First appeared 1949
system call mechanisms ultimately rest. In contrast to
assembly languages, most high-level programming languages are generally portable across multiple
architectures but require interpreting or compiling, a much more complicated task than assembling.

The computational step when an assembler is processing a program is called assembly time.

Contents
Assembly language syntax
Terminology
Key concepts
 Assembler
Number of passes
High-level assemblers
Assembly language
Language design
Basic elements
Opcode mnemonics and extended mnemonics
Data directives
Assembly directives
Macros
Support for structured programming
Use of assembly language
Historical perspective
Current usage
Typical applications
See also
Notes
References
Further reading
External links

Assembly language syntax

Assembly language uses a mnemonic to represent each low-level machine instruction or opcode, typically also
each architectural register, flag, etc. Many operations require one or more operands in order to form a complete
instruction. Most assemblers permit named constants, registers, and labels for program and memory locations,
and can calculate expressions for operands. Thus, programmers are freed from tedious repetitive calculations
and assembler programs are much more readable than machine code. Depending on the architecture, these
elements may also be combined for specific instructions or addressing modes using offsets or other data as well
as fixed addresses. Many assemblers offer additional mechanisms to facilitate program development, to control
the assembly process, and to aid debugging.

Terminology
A macro assembler includes a macroinstruction facility so that (parameterized) assembly
language text can be represented by a name, and that name can be used to insert the
expanded text into other code.
A cross assembler (see also cross compiler) is an assembler that is run on a computer or
operating system (the host system) of a different type from the system on which the resulting
code is to run (the target system). Cross-assembling facilitates the development of programs for
systems that do not have the resources to support software development, such as an
embedded system or a microcontroller. In such a case, the resulting object code must be
transferred to the target system, via read-only memory (ROM, EPROM, etc.), a programmer
(when the read-only memory is integrated in the device, as in microcontrollers), or a data link
using either an exact bit-by-bit copy of the object code or a text-based representation of that
code (such as Intel hex or Motorola S-record).
 A high-level assembler is a program that provides language abstractions more often
associated with high-level languages, such as advanced control structures (IF/THEN/ELSE,
DO CASE, etc.) and high-level abstract data types, including structures/records, unions,
classes, and sets.
A microassembler is a program that helps prepare a microprogram, called firmware, to control
the low level operation of a computer.
A meta-assembler is "a program that accepts the syntactic and semantic description of an
assembly language, and generates an assembler for that language".[10] "Meta-Symbol"
assemblers for the SDS 9 Series and SDS Sigma series of computers are meta-
assemblers.[11][nb 1] Sperry Univac also provided a Meta-Assembler for the UNIVAC
1100/2200 series.[12]
inline assembler (or embedded assembler) is assembler code contained within a high-level
language program.[13] This is most often used in systems programs which need direct access
to the hardware.

Key concepts

Assembler

An assembler program creates object code by translating combinations of mnemonics and syntax for
operations and addressing modes into their numerical equivalents. This representation typically includes an
operation code ("opcode") as well as other control bits and data. The assembler also calculates constant
expressions and resolves symbolic names for memory locations and other entities.[14] The use of symbolic
references is a key feature of assemblers, saving tedious calculations and manual address updates after program
modifications. Most assemblers also include macro facilities for performing textual substitution – e.g., to
generate common short sequences of instructions as inline, instead of called subroutines.

Some assemblers may also be able to perform some simple types of instruction set-specific optimizations. One
concrete example of this may be the ubiquitous x86 assemblers from various vendors. Called jump-sizing,[14]
most of them are able to perform jump-instruction replacements (long jumps replaced by short or relative
jumps) in any number of passes, on request. Others may even do simple rearrangement or insertion of
instructions, such as some assemblers for RISC architectures that can help optimize a sensible instruction
scheduling to exploit the CPU pipeline as efficiently as possible.

Assemblers have been available since the 1950s, as the first step above machine language and before high-
level programming languages such as Fortran, Algol, COBOL and Lisp. There have also been several classes
of translators and semi-automatic code generators with properties similar to both assembly and high-level
languages, with Speedcode as perhaps one of the better-known examples.

There may be several assemblers with different syntax for a particular CPU or instruction set architecture. For
instance, an instruction to add memory data to a register in a x86-family processor might be add eax,
[ebx], in original Intel syntax, whereas this would be written addl (%ebx),%eax in the AT&T syntax
used by the GNU Assembler. Despite different appearances, different syntactic forms generally generate the
same numeric machine code. A single assembler may also have different modes in order to support variations
in syntactic forms as well as their exact semantic interpretations (such as FASM-syntax, TASM-syntax, ideal
mode, etc., in the special case of x86 assembly programming).

Number of passes
There are two types of assemblers based on how many passes through the source are needed (how many times
the assembler reads the source) to produce the object file.

One-pass assemblers go through the source code once. Any symbol used before it is defined
will require "errata" at the end of the object code (or, at least, no earlier than the point where the
symbol is defined) telling the linker or the loader to "go back" and overwrite a placeholder
which had been left where the as yet undefined symbol was used.
Multi-pass assemblers create a table with all symbols and their values in the first passes, then
use the table in later passes to generate code.

In both cases, the assembler must be able to determine the size of each instruction on the initial passes in order
to calculate the addresses of subsequent symbols. This means that if the size of an operation referring to an
operand defined later depends on the type or distance of the operand, the assembler will make a pessimistic
estimate when first encountering the operation, and if necessary, pad it with one or more "no-operation"
instructions in a later pass or the errata. In an assembler with peephole optimization, addresses may be
recalculated between passes to allow replacing pessimistic code with code tailored to the exact distance from
the target.

The original reason for the use of one-pass assemblers was memory size and speed of assembly – often a
second pass would require storing the symbol table in memory (to handle forward references), rewinding and
rereading the program source on tape, or rereading a deck of cards or punched paper tape. Later computers
with much larger memories (especially disc storage), had the space to perform all necessary processing without
such re-reading. The advantage of the multi-pass assembler is that the absence of errata makes the linking
process (or the program load if the assembler directly produces executable code) faster.[15]

Example: in the following code snippet, a one-pass assembler would be able to determine the address of the
backward reference BKWD when assembling statement S2, but would not be able to determine the address of
the forward reference FWD when assembling the branch statement S1; indeed, FWD may be undefined. A
two-pass assembler would determine both addresses in pass 1, so they would be known when generating code
in pass 2.

S1 B FWD
...
FWD EQU *
...
BKWD EQU *
...
S2 B BKWD

High-level assemblers

More sophisticated high-level assemblers provide language abstractions such as:

High-level procedure/function declarations and invocations

Advanced control structures (IF/THEN/ELSE, SWITCH)
High-level abstract data types, including structures/records, unions, classes, and sets
Sophisticated macro processing (although available on ordinary assemblers since the late
1950s for, e.g., the IBM 700 series and IBM 7000 series, and since the 1960s for IBM
System/360 (S/360), amongst other machines)
Object-oriented programming features such as classes, objects, abstraction, polymorphism,
and inheritance[16]

See Language design below for more details.

Assembly language

A program written in assembly language consists of a series of mnemonic processor instructions and meta-
statements (known variously as directives, pseudo-instructions, and pseudo-ops), comments and data.
Assembly language instructions usually consist of an opcode mnemonic followed by an operand, which might
be a list of data, arguments or parameters.[17] Some instructions may be "implied," which means the data upon
which the instruction operates is implicitly defined by the instruction itself—such an instruction does not take
an operand. The resulting statement is translated by an assembler into machine language instructions that can
be loaded into memory and executed.

For example, the instruction below tells an x86/IA-32 processor to move an immediate 8-bit value into a
register. The binary code for this instruction is 10110 followed by a 3-bit identifier for which register to use.
The identifier for the AL register is 000, so the following machine code loads the AL register with the data
01100001.[17]

10110000 01100001

This binary computer code can be made more human-readable by expressing it in hexadecimal as follows.

B0 61

Here, B0 means 'Move a copy of the following value into AL, and 61 is a hexadecimal representation of the
value 01100001, which is 97 in decimal. Assembly language for the 8086 family provides the mnemonic
MOV (an abbreviation of move) for instructions such as this, so the machine code above can be written as
follows in assembly language, complete with an explanatory comment if required, after the semicolon. This is
much easier to read and to remember.

MOV AL, 61h ; Load AL with 97 decimal (61 hex)

In some assembly languages (including this one) the same mnemonic, such as MOV, may be used for a family
of related instructions for loading, copying and moving data, whether these are immediate values, values in
registers, or memory locations pointed to by values in registers or by immediate (a.k.a direct) addresses. Other
assemblers may use separate opcode mnemonics such as L for "move memory to register", ST for "move
register to memory", LR for "move register to register", MVI for "move immediate operand to memory", etc.

If the same mnemonic is used for different instructions, that means that the mnemonic corresponds to several
different binary instruction codes, excluding data (e.g. the 61h in this example), depending on the operands
that follow the mnemonic. For example, for the x86/IA-32 CPUs, the Intel assembly language syntax MOV
AL, AH represents an instruction that moves the contents of register AH into register AL. The[nb 2]
hexadecimal form of this instruction is:

88 E0

The first byte, 88h, identifies a move between a byte-sized register and either another register or memory, and
the second byte, E0h, is encoded (with three bit-fields) to specify that both operands are registers, the source is
AH, and the destination is AL.
In a case like this where the same mnemonic can represent more than one binary instruction, the assembler
determines which instruction to generate by examining the operands. In the first example, the operand 61h is
a valid hexadecimal numeric constant and is not a valid register name, so only the B0 instruction can be
applicable. In the second example, the operand AH is a valid register name and not a valid numeric constant
(hexadecimal, decimal, octal, or binary), so only the 88 instruction can be applicable.

Assembly languages are always designed so that this sort of unambiguousness is universally enforced by their
syntax. For example, in the Intel x86 assembly language, a hexadecimal constant must start with a numeral
digit, so that the hexadecimal number 'A' (equal to decimal ten) would be written as 0Ah or 0AH, not AH,
specifically so that it cannot appear to be the name of register AH. (The same rule also prevents ambiguity with
the names of registers BH, CH, and DH, as well as with any user-defined symbol that ends with the letter H
and otherwise contains only characters that are hexadecimal digits, such as the word "BEACH".)

Returning to the original example, while the x86 opcode 10110000 (B0) copies an 8-bit value into the AL
register, 10110001 (B1) moves it into CL and 10110010 (B2) does so into DL. Assembly language examples
for these follow.[17]

MOV AL, 1h ; Load AL with immediate value 1

MOV CL, 2h ; Load CL with immediate value 2
MOV DL, 3h ; Load DL with immediate value 3

The syntax of MOV can also be more complex as the following examples show.[18]

MOV EAX, [EBX] ; Move the 4 bytes in memory at the address contained in EBX into EAX
MOV [ESI+EAX], CL ; Move the contents of CL into the byte at address ESI+EAX
MOV DS, DX ; Move the contents of DX into segment register DS

In each case, the MOV mnemonic is translated directly into one of the opcodes 88-8C, 8E, A0-A3, B0-BF, C6
or C7 by an assembler, and the programmer normally does not have to know or remember which.[17]

Transforming assembly language into machine code is the job of an assembler, and the reverse can at least
partially be achieved by a disassembler. Unlike high-level languages, there is a one-to-one correspondence
between many simple assembly statements and machine language instructions. However, in some cases, an
assembler may provide pseudoinstructions (essentially macros) which expand into several machine language
instructions to provide commonly needed functionality. For example, for a machine that lacks a "branch if
greater or equal" instruction, an assembler may provide a pseudoinstruction that expands to the machine's "set
if less than" and "branch if zero (on the result of the set instruction)". Most full-featured assemblers also
provide a rich macro language (discussed below) which is used by vendors and programmers to generate more
complex code and data sequences. Since the information about pseudoinstructions and macros defined in the
assembler environment is not present in the object program, a disassembler cannot reconstruct the macro and
pseudoinstruction invocations but can only disassemble the actual machine instructions that the assembler
generated from those abstract assembly-language entities. Likewise, since comments in the assembly language
source file are ignored by the assembler and have no effect on the object code it generates, a disassembler is
always completely unable to recover source comments.

Each computer architecture has its own machine language. Computers differ in the number and type of
operations they support, in the different sizes and numbers of registers, and in the representations of data in
storage. While most general-purpose computers are able to carry out essentially the same functionality, the
ways they do so differ; the corresponding assembly languages reflect these differences.
Multiple sets of mnemonics or assembly-language syntax may exist for a single instruction set, typically
instantiated in different assembler programs. In these cases, the most popular one is usually that supplied by the
CPU manufacturer and used in its documentation.

Two examples of CPUs that have two different sets of mnemonics are the Intel 8080 family and the Intel
8086/8088. Because Intel claimed copyright on its assembly language mnemonics (on each page of their
documentation published in the 1970s and early 1980s, at least), some companies that independently produced
CPUs compatible with Intel instruction sets invented their own mnemonics. The Zilog Z80 CPU, an
enhancement of the Intel 8080A, supports all the 8080A instructions plus many more; Zilog invented an
entirely new assembly language, not only for the new instructions but also for all of the 8080A instructions.
For example, where Intel uses the mnemonics MOV, MVI, LDA, STA, LXI, LDAX, STAX, LHLD, and SHLD
for various data transfer instructions, the Z80 assembly language uses the mnemonic LD for all of them. A
similar case is the NEC V20 and V30 CPUs, enhanced copies of the Intel 8086 and 8088, respectively. Like
Zilog with the Z80, NEC invented new mnemonics for all of the 8086 and 8088 instructions, to avoid
accusations of infringement of Intel's copyright. (It is questionable whether such copyrights can be valid, and
later CPU companies such as AMD[nb 3] and Cyrix republished Intel's x86/IA-32 instruction mnemonics
exactly with neither permission nor legal penalty.) It is doubtful whether in practice many people who
programmed the V20 and V30 actually wrote in NEC's assembly language rather than Intel's; since any two
assembly languages for the same instruction set architecture are isomorphic (somewhat like English and Pig
Latin), there is no requirement to use a manufacturer's own published assembly language with that
manufacturer's products.

Language design

Basic elements

There is a large degree of diversity in the way the authors of assemblers categorize statements and in the
nomenclature that they use. In particular, some describe anything other than a machine mnemonic or extended
mnemonic as a pseudo-operation (pseudo-op). A typical assembly language consists of 3 types of instruction
statements that are used to define program operations:

Opcode mnemonics
Data definitions
Assembly directives

Opcode mnemonics and extended mnemonics

Instructions (statements) in assembly language are generally very simple, unlike those in high-level languages.
Generally, a mnemonic is a symbolic name for a single executable machine language instruction (an opcode),
and there is at least one opcode mnemonic defined for each machine language instruction. Each instruction
typically consists of an operation or opcode plus zero or more operands. Most instructions refer to a single
value or a pair of values. Operands can be immediate (value coded in the instruction itself), registers specified
in the instruction or implied, or the addresses of data located elsewhere in storage. This is determined by the
underlying processor architecture: the assembler merely reflects how this architecture works. Extended
mnemonics are often used to specify a combination of an opcode with a specific operand, e.g., the System/360
assemblers use B as an extended mnemonic for BC with a mask of 15 and NOP ("NO OPeration" – do nothing
for one step) for BC with a mask of 0.
Extended mnemonics are often used to support specialized uses of instructions, often for purposes not obvious
from the instruction name. For example, many CPU's do not have an explicit NOP instruction, but do have
instructions that can be used for the purpose. In 8086 CPUs the instruction xchg ax,ax is used for nop,
with nop being a pseudo-opcode to encode the instruction xchg ax,ax. Some disassemblers recognize
this and will decode the xchg ax,ax instruction as nop. Similarly, IBM assemblers for System/360 and
System/370 use the extended mnemonics NOP and NOPR for BC and BCR with zero masks. For the SPARC
architecture, these are known as synthetic instructions.[19]

Some assemblers also support simple built-in macro-instructions that generate two or more machine
instructions. For instance, with some Z80 assemblers the instruction ld hl,bc is recognized to generate ld
l,c followed by ld h,b.[20] These are sometimes known as pseudo-opcodes.

Mnemonics are arbitrary symbols; in 1985 the IEEE published Standard 694 for a uniform set of mnemonics
to be used by all assemblers. The standard has since been withdrawn.

Data directives

There are instructions used to define data elements to hold data and variables. They define the type of data, the
length and the alignment of data. These instructions can also define whether the data is available to outside
programs (programs assembled separately) or only to the program in which the data section is defined. Some
assemblers classify these as pseudo-ops.

Assembly directives

Assembly directives, also called pseudo-opcodes, pseudo-operations or pseudo-ops, are commands given to an
assembler "directing it to perform operations other than assembling instructions".[14] Directives affect how the
assembler operates and "may affect the object code, the symbol table, the listing file, and the values of internal
assembler parameters". Sometimes the term pseudo-opcode is reserved for directives that generate object code,
such as those that generate data.[21]

The names of pseudo-ops often start with a dot to distinguish them from machine instructions. Pseudo-ops can
make the assembly of the program dependent on parameters input by a programmer, so that one program can
be assembled in different ways, perhaps for different applications. Or, a pseudo-op can be used to manipulate
presentation of a program to make it easier to read and maintain. Another common use of pseudo-ops is to
reserve storage areas for run-time data and optionally initialize their contents to known values.

Symbolic assemblers let programmers associate arbitrary names (labels or symbols) with memory locations and
various constants. Usually, every constant and variable is given a name so instructions can reference those
locations by name, thus promoting self-documenting code. In executable code, the name of each subroutine is
associated with its entry point, so any calls to a subroutine can use its name. Inside subroutines, GOTO
destinations are given labels. Some assemblers support local symbols which are often lexically distinct from
normal symbols (e.g., the use of "10$" as a GOTO destination).

Some assemblers, such as NASM, provide flexible symbol management, letting programmers manage
different namespaces, automatically calculate offsets within data structures, and assign labels that refer to literal
values or the result of simple computations performed by the assembler. Labels can also be used to initialize
constants and variables with relocatable addresses.

Assembly languages, like most other computer languages, allow comments to be added to program source
code that will be ignored during assembly. Judicious commenting is essential in assembly language programs,
as the meaning and purpose of a sequence of binary machine instructions can be difficult to determine. The
"raw" (uncommented) assembly language generated by compilers or disassemblers is quite difficult to read
when changes must be made.

Macros

Many assemblers support predefined macros, and others support programmer-defined (and repeatedly re-
definable) macros involving sequences of text lines in which variables and constants are embedded. The macro
definition is most commonly[nb 4] a mixture of assembler statements, e.g., directives, symbolic machine
instructions, and templates for assembler statements. This sequence of text lines may include opcodes or
directives. Once a macro has been defined its name may be used in place of a mnemonic. When the assembler
processes such a statement, it replaces the statement with the text lines associated with that macro, then
processes them as if they existed in the source code file (including, in some assemblers, expansion of any
macros existing in the replacement text). Macros in this sense date to IBM autocoders of the 1950s.[22][nb 5]

In assembly language, the term "macro" represents a more comprehensive concept than it does in some other
contexts, such as the pre-processor in the C programming language, where its #define directive typically is
used to create short single line macros. Assembler macro instructions, like macros in PL/I and some other
languages, can be lengthy "programs" by themselves, executed by interpretation by the assembler during
assembly.

Since macros can have 'short' names but expand to several or indeed many lines of code, they can be used to
make assembly language programs appear to be far shorter, requiring fewer lines of source code, as with
higher level languages. They can also be used to add higher levels of structure to assembly programs,
optionally introduce embedded debugging code via parameters and other similar features.

Macro assemblers often allow macros to take parameters. Some assemblers include quite sophisticated macro
languages, incorporating such high-level language elements as optional parameters, symbolic variables,
conditionals, string manipulation, and arithmetic operations, all usable during the execution of a given macro,
and allowing macros to save context or exchange information. Thus a macro might generate numerous
assembly language instructions or data definitions, based on the macro arguments. This could be used to
generate record-style data structures or "unrolled" loops, for example, or could generate entire algorithms
based on complex parameters. For instance, a "sort" macro could accept the specification of a complex sort
key and generate code crafted for that specific key, not needing the run-time tests that would be required for a
general procedure interpreting the specification. An organization using assembly language that has been
heavily extended using such a macro suite can be considered to be working in a higher-level language since
such programmers are not working with a computer's lowest-level conceptual elements. Underlining this point,
macros were used to implement an early virtual machine in SNOBOL4 (1967), which was written in the
SNOBOL Implementation Language (SIL), an assembly language for a virtual machine. The target machine
would translate this to its native code using a macro assembler.[23] This allowed a high degree of portability
for the time.

Macros were used to customize large scale software systems for specific customers in the mainframe era and
were also used by customer personnel to satisfy their employers' needs by making specific versions of
manufacturer operating systems. This was done, for example, by systems programmers working with IBM's
Conversational Monitor System / Virtual Machine (VM/CMS) and with IBM's "real time transaction
processing" add-ons, Customer Information Control System CICS, and ACP/TPF, the airline/financial system
that began in the 1970s and still runs many large computer reservation systems (CRS) and credit card systems
today.

It is also possible to use solely the macro processing abilities of an assembler to generate code written in
completely different languages, for example, to generate a version of a program in COBOL using a pure
macro assembler program containing lines of COBOL code inside assembly time operators instructing the
assembler to generate arbitrary code. IBM OS/360 uses macros to perform system generation. The user
specifies options by coding a series of assembler macros. Assembling these macros generates a job stream to
build the system, including job control language and utility control statements.

This is because, as was realized in the 1960s, the concept of "macro processing" is independent of the concept
of "assembly", the former being in modern terms more word processing, text processing, than generating
object code. The concept of macro processing appeared, and appears, in the C programming language, which
supports "preprocessor instructions" to set variables, and make conditional tests on their values. Unlike certain
previous macro processors inside assemblers, the C preprocessor is not Turing-complete because it lacks the
ability to either loop or "go to", the latter allowing programs to loop.

Despite the power of macro processing, it fell into disuse in many high level languages (major exceptions
being C, C++ and PL/I) while remaining a perennial for assemblers.

Macro parameter substitution is strictly by name: at macro processing time, the value of a parameter is textually
substituted for its name. The most famous class of bugs resulting was the use of a parameter that itself was an
expression and not a simple name when the macro writer expected a name. In the macro:

foo: macro a
load a*b

the intention was that the caller would provide the name of a variable, and the "global" variable or constant b
would be used to multiply "a". If foo is called with the parameter a-c, the macro expansion of load a-
c*b occurs. To avoid any possible ambiguity, users of macro processors can parenthesize formal parameters
inside macro definitions, or callers can parenthesize the input parameters.[24]

Support for structured programming

Packages of macros have been written providing structured programming elements to encode execution flow.
The earliest example of this approach was in the Concept-14 macro set,[25] originally proposed by Harlan
Mills (March 1970), and implemented by Marvin Kessler at IBM's Federal Systems Division, which provided
IF/ELSE/ENDIF and similar control flow blocks for OS/360 assembler programs. This was a way to reduce
or eliminate the use of GOTO operations in assembly code, one of the main factors causing spaghetti code in
assembly language. This approach was widely accepted in the early 1980s (the latter days of large-scale
assembly language use).

A curious design was A-natural, a "stream-oriented" assembler for 8080/Z80, processors from Whitesmiths
Ltd. (developers of the Unix-like Idris operating system, and what was reported to be the first commercial C
compiler). The language was classified as an assembler because it worked with raw machine elements such as
opcodes, registers, and memory references; but it incorporated an expression syntax to indicate execution
order. Parentheses and other special symbols, along with block-oriented structured programming constructs,
controlled the sequence of the generated instructions. A-natural was built as the object language of a C
compiler, rather than for hand-coding, but its logical syntax won some fans.

There has been little apparent demand for more sophisticated assemblers since the decline of large-scale
assembly language development.[26] In spite of that, they are still being developed and applied in cases where
resource constraints or peculiarities in the target system's architecture prevent the effective use of higher-level
languages.[27]

Assemblers with a strong macro engine allow structured programming via macros, such as the switch macro
provided with the Masm32 package (this code is a complete program):
 include \masm32\include\masm32rt.inc ; use the Masm32 library

.code
demomain:
REPEAT 20
switch rv(nrandom, 9) ; generate a number between 0 and 8
mov ecx, 7
case 0
print "case 0"
case ecx ; in contrast to most other programming languages,
print "case 7" ; the Masm32 switch allows "variable cases"
case 1 .. 3
.if eax==1
print "case 1"
.elseif eax==2
print "case 2"
.else
print "cases 1 to 3: other"
.endif
case 4, 6, 8
print "cases 4, 6 or 8"
default
mov ebx, 19 ; print 20 stars
.Repeat
print "*"
dec ebx
.Until Sign? ; loop until the sign flag is set
endsw
print chr$(13, 10)
ENDM
exit
end demomain

Use of assembly language

Historical perspective

Assembly languages were not available at the time when the stored-program computer was introduced.
Kathleen Booth "is credited with inventing assembly language" [28][29] based on theoretical work she began in
1947, while working on the ARC2 at Birkbeck, University of London following consultation by Andrew
Booth (later her husband) with mathematician John von Neumann and physicist Herman Goldstine at the
Institute for Advanced Study.[29][30]

In late 1948, the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC) had an assembler (named "initial
orders") integrated into its bootstrap program. It used one-letter mnemonics developed by David Wheeler, who
is credited by the IEEE Computer Society as the creator of the first "assembler". [14][31][32] Reports on the
EDSAC introduced the term "assembly" for the process of combining fields into an instruction word.[33]
SOAP (Symbolic Optimal Assembly Program) was an assembly language for the IBM 650 computer written
by Stan Poley in 1955.[34]

Assembly languages eliminate much of the error-prone, tedious, and time-consuming first-generation
programming needed with the earliest computers, freeing programmers from tedium such as remembering
numeric codes and calculating addresses.

Assembly languages were once widely used for all sorts of programming. However, by the 1980s (1990s on
microcomputers), their use had largely been supplanted by higher-level languages, in the search for improved
programming productivity. Today, assembly language is still used for direct hardware manipulation, access to
specialized processor instructions, or to address critical performance issues. Typical uses are device drivers,
low-level embedded systems, and real-time systems.
Historically, numerous programs have been written entirely in assembly language. The Burroughs MCP
(1961) was the first computer for which an operating system was not developed entirely in assembly language;
it was written in Executive Systems Problem Oriented Language (ESPOL), an Algol dialect. Many
commercial applications were written in assembly language as well, including a large amount of the IBM
mainframe software written by large corporations. COBOL, FORTRAN and some PL/I eventually displaced
much of this work, although a number of large organizations retained assembly-language application
infrastructures well into the 1990s.

Most early microcomputers relied on hand-coded assembly language, including most operating systems and
large applications. This was because these systems had severe resource constraints, imposed idiosyncratic
memory and display architectures, and provided limited, buggy system services. Perhaps more important was
the lack of first-class high-level language compilers suitable for microcomputer use. A psychological factor
may have also played a role: the first generation of microcomputer programmers retained a hobbyist, "wires
and pliers" attitude.

In a more commercial context, the biggest reasons for using assembly language were minimal bloat (size),
minimal overhead, greater speed, and reliability.

Typical examples of large assembly language programs from this time are IBM PC DOS operating systems,
the Turbo Pascal compiler and early applications such as the spreadsheet program Lotus 1-2-3. Assembly
language was used to get the best performance out of the Sega Saturn, a console that was notoriously
challenging to develop and program games for.[35] The 1993 arcade game NBA Jam is another example.

Assembly language has long been the primary development language for many popular home computers of
the 1980s and 1990s (such as the MSX, Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Commodore Amiga, and
Atari ST). This was in large part because interpreted BASIC dialects on these systems offered insufficient
execution speed, as well as insufficient facilities to take full advantage of the available hardware on these
systems. Some systems even have an integrated development environment (IDE) with highly advanced
debugging and macro facilities. Some compilers available for the Radio Shack TRS-80 and its successors had
the capability to combine inline assembly source with high-level program statements. Upon compilation, a
built-in assembler produced inline machine code.

Current usage

There have always[36] been debates over the usefulness and performance of assembly language relative to
high-level languages.

Although assembly language has specific niche uses where it is important (see below), there are other tools for
optimization.[37]

As of July 2017, the TIOBE index of programming language popularity ranks assembly language at 11, ahead
of Visual Basic, for example.[38] Assembler can be used to optimize for speed or optimize for size. In the case
of speed optimization, modern optimizing compilers are claimed[39] to render high-level languages into code
that can run as fast as hand-written assembly, despite the counter-examples that can be found. [40][41][42] The
complexity of modern processors and memory sub-systems makes effective optimization increasingly difficult
for compilers, as well as for assembly programmers.[43][44] Moreover, increasing processor performance has
meant that most CPUs sit idle most of the time,[45] with delays caused by predictable bottlenecks such as
cache misses, I/O operations and paging. This has made raw code execution speed a non-issue for many
programmers.

There are some situations in which developers might choose to use assembly language:
 Writing code for systems with older processors that have limited high-level language options
such as the Atari 2600, Commodore 64, and graphing calculators.[46]
Code that must interact directly with the hardware, for example in device drivers and interrupt
handlers.
In an embedded processor or DSP, high-repetition interrupts require the shortest number of
cycles per interrupt, such as an interrupt that occurs 1000 or 10000 times a second.
Programs that need to use processor-specific instructions not implemented in a compiler. A
common example is the bitwise rotation instruction at the core of many encryption algorithms,
as well as querying the parity of a byte or the 4-bit carry of an addition.
A stand-alone executable of compact size is required that must execute without recourse to the
run-time components or libraries associated with a high-level language. Examples have
included firmware for telephones, automobile fuel and ignition systems, air-conditioning control
systems, security systems, and sensors.
Programs with performance-sensitive inner loops, where assembly language provides
optimization opportunities that are difficult to achieve in a high-level language. For example,
linear algebra with BLAS[40][47] or discrete cosine transformation (e.g. SIMD assembly version
from x264[48]).
Programs that create vectorized functions for programs in higher-level languages such as C. In
the higher-level language this is sometimes aided by compiler intrinsic functions which map
directly to SIMD mnemonics, but nevertheless result in a one-to-one assembly conversion
specific for the given vector processor.
Real-time programs such as simulations, flight navigation systems, and medical equipment.
For example, in a fly-by-wire system, telemetry must be interpreted and acted upon within strict
time constraints. Such systems must eliminate sources of unpredictable delays, which may be
created by (some) interpreted languages, automatic garbage collection, paging operations, or
preemptive multitasking. However, some higher-level languages incorporate run-time
components and operating system interfaces that can introduce such delays. Choosing
assembly or lower level languages for such systems gives programmers greater visibility and
control over processing details.
Cryptographic algorithms that must always take strictly the same time to execute, preventing
timing attacks.
Modify and extend legacy code written for IBM mainframe computers.[49] [50]
Situations where complete control over the environment is required, in extremely high-security
situations where nothing can be taken for granted.
Computer viruses, bootloaders, certain device drivers, or other items very close to the hardware
or low-level operating system.
Instruction set simulators for monitoring, tracing and debugging where additional overhead is
kept to a minimum.
Situations where no high-level language exists, on a new or specialized processor for which no
cross compiler is available.
Reverse-engineering and modifying program files such as:
existing binaries that may or may not have originally been written in a high-level language,
for example when trying to recreate programs for which source code is not available or has
been lost, or cracking copy protection of proprietary software.
Video games (also termed ROM hacking), which is possible via several methods. The most
widely employed method is altering program code at the assembly language level.

Assembly language is still taught in most computer science and electronic engineering programs. Although
few programmers today regularly work with assembly language as a tool, the underlying concepts remain
important. Such fundamental topics as binary arithmetic, memory allocation, stack processing, character set
encoding, interrupt processing, and compiler design would be hard to study in detail without a grasp of how a
computer operates at the hardware level. Since a computer's behavior is fundamentally defined by its
instruction set, the logical way to learn such concepts is to study an assembly language. Most modern
computers have similar instruction sets. Therefore, studying a single assembly language is sufficient to learn: I)
the basic concepts; II) to recognize situations where the use of assembly language might be appropriate; and
III) to see how efficient executable code can be created from high-level languages. [16]

Assembly language is also widely used among hobbyists who develop programs for the computers of the
1970s and 1980s often in the context of demoscene or retrogaming subcultures.

Typical applications
Assembly language is typically used in a system's boot code, the low-level code that initializes
and tests the system hardware prior to booting the operating system and is often stored in
ROM. (BIOS on IBM-compatible PC systems and CP/M is an example.)
Assembly language is often used for low-level code, for instance for operating system kernels,
which cannot rely on the availability of pre-existing system calls and must indeed implement
them for the particular processor architecture on which the system will be running.
Some compilers translate high-level languages into assembly first before fully compiling,
allowing the assembly code to be viewed for debugging and optimization purposes.
Some compilers for relatively low-level languages, such as Pascal or C, allow the programmer
to embed assembly language directly in the source code (so called inline assembly). Programs
using such facilities can then construct abstractions using different assembly language on each
hardware platform. The system's portable code can then use these processor-specific
components through a uniform interface.
Assembly language is useful in reverse engineering. Many programs are distributed only in
machine code form which is straightforward to translate into assembly language by a
disassembler, but more difficult to translate into a higher-level language through a decompiler.
Tools such as the Interactive Disassembler make extensive use of disassembly for such a
purpose. This technique is used by hackers to crack commercial software, and competitors to
produce software with similar results from competing companies.
Assembly language is used to enhance speed of execution, especially in early personal
computers with limited processing power and RAM.
Assemblers can be used to generate blocks of data, with no high-level language overhead,
from formatted and commented source code, to be used by other code.[51][52]

See also
Compiler
Comparison of assemblers
Disassembler
Hexadecimal
Instruction set architecture
Little man computer – an educational computer model with a base-10 assembly language
Nibble
Typed assembly language

Notes
1. "Used as a meta-assembler, it enables the user to design his own programming languages and
to generate processors for such languages with a minimum of effort."
2. This is one of two redundant forms of this instruction that operate identically. The 8086 and
several other CPUs from the late 1970s/early 1980s have redundancies in their instruction sets,
because it was simpler for engineers to design these CPUs (to fit on silicon chips of limited
sizes) with the redundant codes than to eliminate them (see don't-care terms). Each assembler
will typically generate only one of two or more redundant instruction encodings, but a
disassembler will usually recognize any of them.
3. AMD manufactured second-source Intel 8086, 8088, and 80286 CPUs, and perhaps 8080A
and/or 8085A CPUs, under license from Intel, but starting with the 80386, Intel refused to share
their x86 CPU designs with anyone—AMD sued about this for breach of contract—and AMD
designed, made, and sold 32-bit and 64-bit x86-family CPUs without Intel's help or
endorsement.
4. In 7070 Autocoder, a macro definition is a 7070 macro generator program that the assembler
calls; Autocoder provides special macros for macro generators to use.
5. "The following minor restriction or limitation is in effect with regard to the use of 1401 Autocoder
when coding macro instructions ..."

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