What Is an Assembly Language?

An assembly language is a type of low-

level programming language that is intended to communicate directly
with a computer's hardware. Unlike machine language, which consists of
binary and hexadecimal characters, assembly languages are designed to
be readable by humans.
Assembly language
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Assembly language

Typical secondary output from an assembler—showing original

assembly language (right) for the Motorola MC6800 and the assembled

form
 Paradigm Imperative, unstructured,

often metaprogramming (through macros), certain

assemblers are object-oriented and/or structured

First appeared 1947; 75 years ago

Typing None

discipline

Filename .asm , .s , .inc , .wla , .SRC and several

extensions others depending on the assembler

In computer programming, assembly language (or assembler language,

[1]
or symbolic machine code[2][3][4]), often referred to simply as Assembly and commonly
abbreviated as ASM or asm, is any low-level programming language with a very strong
correspondence between the instructions in the language and
the architecture's machine code instructions.[5] Assembly language usually has
one statement per machine instruction (1:1), but constants, comments,
assembler directives,[6] symbolic labels of, e.g., memory locations, registers,
and macros[7][1] are generally also supported.
The first assembly code in which a language is used to represent machine code
instructions is found in Kathleen and Andrew Donald Booth's 1947 work, Coding for
A.R.C..[8] Assembly code is converted into executable machine code by a utility
program referred to as an assembler. The term "assembler" is generally attributed
to Wilkes, Wheeler and Gill in their 1951 book The Preparation of Programs for an
Electronic Digital Computer,[9] who, however, used the term to mean "a program that
assembles another program consisting of several sections into a single program".[10] The
conversion process is referred to as assembly, as in assembling the source code. The
computational step when an assembler is processing a program is called assembly
time.
Because assembly depends on the machine code instructions, each assembly
language[nb 1] is specific to a particular computer architecture.[11][12][13]
Sometimes there is more than one assembler for the same architecture, and sometimes
an assembler is specific to an operating system or to particular operating systems. Most
assembly languages do not provide specific syntax for operating system calls, and most
assembly languages can be used universally with any operating system,[nb 2] as the
language provides access to all the real capabilities of the processor, upon which
all 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, much more complicated tasks than
assembling.
In the first decades of computing, it was commonplace for both systems
programming and application programming to take place entirely in assembly language.
While still irreplaceable for some purposes, the majority of programming is now
conducted in higher-level interpreted and compiled languages. In "No Silver
Bullet", Fred Brooks summarised the effects of the switch away from assembly
language programming: "Surely the most powerful stroke for software productivity,
reliability, and simplicity has been the progressive use of high-level languages for
programming. Most observers credit that development with at least a factor of five in
productivity, and with concomitant gains in reliability, simplicity, and
comprehensibility."[14]
Today, it is typical to use small amounts of assembly language code within larger
systems implemented in a higher-level language, for performance reasons or to interact
directly with hardware in ways unsupported by the higher-level language. For instance,
just under 2% of version 4.9 of the Linux kernel source code is written in assembly;
more than 97% is written in C.[15]

Contents

 1Assembly language syntax

o 1.1IBM System/360
 2Terminology
 3Key concepts
o 3.1Assembler
 3.1.1Number of passes
 3.1.2High-level assemblers
o 3.2Assembly language
 4Language design
o 4.1Basic elements
 4.1.1Opcode mnemonics and extended mnemonics
 4.1.2Data directives
 4.1.3Assembly directives
o 4.2Macros
o 4.3Support for structured programming
 5Use of assembly language
o 5.1Historical perspective
o 5.2Current usage
o 5.3Typical applications
 6See also
 7Notes
 8References
 9Further reading
 10External links

Assembly language syntax[edit]

Assembly language uses a mnemonic to represent, e.g., each low-level machine
instruction or opcode, each directive, typically also each architectural register, flag, etc.
Some of the mnemonics may be built in and some user defined. 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.
Some are column oriented, with specific fields in specific columns; this was very
common for machines using punched cards in the 1950s and early 1960s. Some
assemblers have free-form syntax, with fields separated by delimiters, e.g.,
punctuation, white space. Some assemblers are hybrid, with, e.g., labels, in a specific
column and other fields separated by delimiters; this became more common than
column oriented syntax in the 1960s.
IBM System/360[edit]
All of the IBM assemblers for System/360, by default, have a label in column 1, fields
separated by delimiters in columns 2-71, a continuation indicator in column 72 and a
sequence number in columns 73-80. The delimiter for label, opcode, operands and
comments is spaces, while individual operands are separated by commas and
parentheses.

Terminology[edit]
 A macro assembler is an assembler that 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.
o Open code refers to any assembler input outside of a
macro definition.
 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",[16] or that
accepts an assembler source file along with such a
description and assembles the source file in accordance
with that description. "Meta-Symbol" assemblers for
the SDS 9 Series and SDS Sigma series of computers are
meta-assemblers.[17][nb 3] Sperry Univac also provided a Meta-
Assembler for the UNIVAC 1100/2200 series.[18]
 inline assembler (or embedded assembler) is assembler
code contained within a high-level language program.
[19]
This is most often used in systems programs which need
direct access to the hardware.

Key concepts[edit]
Assembler[edit]
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.[20] 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,[20] 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.[21]
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[edit]
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 process the source code once. For

symbols used before they are defined, the assembler will
emit "errata" after the eventual definition, telling
the linker or the loader to patch the locations where the as
yet undefined symbols had been 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.[22]
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[edit]
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[23]
See Language design below for more details.
Assembly language[edit]
A program written in assembly language consists of a series of mnemonic processor
instructions and meta-statements (known variously as declarative operations, directives,
pseudo-instructions, pseudo-operations 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.[24] 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.[24]

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 4] 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.[24]

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.[25]

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.[24]
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 5] 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[edit]
Basic elements[edit]
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[edit]
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.[26]
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 .[27] 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[edit]
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[edit]
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".[20] 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.[28]
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[edit]
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 6] 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.[29][nb 7]
Macro assemblers typically have directives to, e.g., define macros, define variables, set
variables to the result of an arithmetic, logical or string expression, iterate, conditionally
generate code. Some of those directives may be restricted to use within a macro
definition, e.g., MEXIT in HLASM, while others may be permitted within open code
(outside macro definitions), e.g., AIF and COPY in HLASM.
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.[30] 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.[31]
Support for structured programming[edit]
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,[32] 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). IBM's High
Level Assembler Toolkit[33] includes such a macro package.
A curious design was A-natural, a "stream-oriented" assembler for 8080/Z80,
processors[citation needed] 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.[34] 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. [35]
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[edit]

Historical perspective[edit]
Assembly languages were not available at the time when the stored-program
computer was introduced. Kathleen Booth "is credited with inventing assembly
language"[36][37] 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.[37][38]
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".[20][39][40] Reports on the EDSAC introduced
the term "assembly" for the process of combining fields into an instruction word. [41] SOAP
(Symbolic Optimal Assembly Program) was an assembly language for the IBM
650 computer written by Stan Poley in 1955.[42]
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. They were once widely used for all sorts of programming. However, by the
late 1950s,[citation needed] 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.[43] Typical uses are device drivers, low-
level embedded systems, and real-time systems (see § Current usage).
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.[44] 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[edit]
There has been debate over the usefulness and performance of assembly language
relative to high-level languages.[45]
Although assembly language has specific niche uses where it is important (see below),
there are other tools for optimization.[46]
As of July 2017, the TIOBE index of programming language popularity ranks assembly
language at 11, ahead of Visual Basic, for example.[47] Assembler can be used to
optimize for speed or optimize for size. In the case of speed optimization,
modern optimizing compilers are claimed[48] to render high-level languages into code that
can run as fast as hand-written assembly, despite the counter-examples that can be
found.[49][50][51] The complexity of modern processors and memory sub-systems makes
effective optimization increasingly difficult for compilers, as well as for assembly
programmers.[52][53] Moreover, increasing processor performance has meant that most
CPUs sit idle most of the time,[54] 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 [clarification

needed]
that have limited high-level language options such as
the Atari 2600, Commodore 64, and graphing calculators.
[55]
Programs for these computers of the 1970s and 1980s
are often written in the context
of demoscene or retrogaming subcultures.
 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[49][56] or discrete cosine
transformation (e.g. SIMD assembly version from x264[57]).
 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.[58][59]
 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:
o 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.
o 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.[23]
Typical applications[edit]
 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.[60][61]

See also[edit]

 Computer programming portal

 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[edit]
1. ^ Other than meta-assemblers
2. ^ However, that does not mean that the assembler programs
implementing those languages are universal.
3. ^ "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."
4. ^ 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.
5. ^ 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.
6. ^ 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.
7. ^ "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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Further reading[edit]
 Bartlett, Jonathan (2004). Programming from the Ground
Up - An introduction to programming using linux assembly
language. Bartlett Publishing. ISBN 0-9752838-4-
7. Archived from the original on 2020-03-24.
Retrieved 2020-03-24. [4]
 Britton, Robert (2003). MIPS Assembly Language
Programming. Prentice Hall. ISBN 0-13-142044-5.
 Calingaert, Peter (1979) [1978-11-05]. Written at University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Horowitz,
Ellis (ed.). Assemblers, Compilers, and Program
Translation. Computer software engineering series (1st
printing, 1st ed.). Potomac, Maryland, USA: Computer
Science Press, Inc. ISBN 0-914894-23-4. ISSN 0888-
2088. LCCN 78-21905. Retrieved 2020-03-
20. (2+xiv+270+6 pages)
 Duntemann, Jeff (2000). Assembly Language Step-by-
Step. Wiley. ISBN 0-471-37523-3.
 Kann, Charles W. (2015). "Introduction to MIPS Assembly
Language Programming". Archived from the original on
2020-03-24. Retrieved 2020-03-24.
 Kann, Charles W. (2021). "Introduction to Assembly
Language Programming: From Soup to Nuts: ARM Edition"
 Norton, Peter; Socha, John (1986). Peter Norton's
Assembly Language Book for the IBM PC. New York, USA:
Brady Books.
 Singer, Michael (1980). PDP-11. Assembler Language
Programming and Machine Organization. New York,
USA: John Wiley & Sons.
 Sweetman, Dominic (1999). See MIPS Run. Morgan
Kaufmann Publishers. ISBN 1-55860-410-3.
 Waldron, John (1998). Introduction to RISC Assembly
Language Programming. Addison Wesley. ISBN 0-201-
39828-1.
 Yurichev, Dennis (2020-03-04) [2013]. "Understanding
Assembly Language (Reverse Engineering for
Beginners)" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on
2020-03-24. Retrieved 2020-03-24.
 "ASM Community Book". 2009. Archived from the
original on 2013-05-30. Retrieved 2013-05-30. ("An online
book full of helpful ASM info, tutorials and code examples"
by the ASM Community, archived at the internet archive.)