6/15/24, 4:01 PM Assembly - Arrays
Assembly - Arrays
We have already discussed that the data definition directives to the assembler are
used for allocating storage for variables. The variable could also be initialized with
some specific value. The initialized value could be specified in hexadecimal, decimal
or binary form.
For example, we can define a word variable 'months' in either of the following way −
MONTHS DW 12
MONTHS DW 0CH
MONTHS DW 0110B
The data definition directives can also be used for defining a one-dimensional array.
Let us define a one-dimensional array of numbers.
NUMBERS DW 34, 45, 56, 67, 75, 89
The above definition declares an array of six words each initialized with the numbers
34, 45, 56, 67, 75, 89. This allocates 2x6 = 12 bytes of consecutive memory space.
The symbolic address of the first number will be NUMBERS and that of the second
number will be NUMBERS + 2 and so on.
Let us take up another example. You can define an array named inventory of size 8,
and initialize all the values with zero, as −
INVENTORY DW 0
DW 0
DW 0
DW 0
DW 0
DW 0
DW 0
DW 0
Which can be abbreviated as −
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6/15/24, 4:01 PM Assembly - Arrays
INVENTORY DW 0, 0 , 0 , 0 , 0 , 0 , 0 , 0
The TIMES directive can also be used for multiple initializations to the same value.
Using TIMES, the INVENTORY array can be defined as:
INVENTORY TIMES 8 DW 0
Example
The following example demonstrates the above concepts by defining a 3-element
array x, which stores three values: 2, 3 and 4. It adds the values in the array and
displays the sum 9 −
section .text Live Demo
global _start ;must be declared for linker (ld)
_start:
mov eax,3 ;number bytes to be summed
mov ebx,0 ;EBX will store the sum
mov ecx, x ;ECX will point to the current element to be summed
top: add ebx, [ecx]
add ecx,1 ;move pointer to next element
dec eax ;decrement counter
jnz top ;if counter not 0, then loop again
done:
add ebx, '0'
mov [sum], ebx ;done, store result in "sum"
display:
mov edx,1 ;message length
mov ecx, sum ;message to write
mov ebx, 1 ;file descriptor (stdout)
mov eax, 4 ;system call number (sys_write)
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6/15/24, 4:01 PM Assembly - Arrays
int 0x80 ;call kernel
mov eax, 1 ;system call number (sys_exit)
int 0x80 ;call kernel
section .data
global x
x:
db 2
db 4
db 3
sum:
db 0
When the above code is compiled and executed, it produces the following result −
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