| <<< | Index | The Assembly Process >>> |
An assembler or compiler is just another program that executes on your computer system.
The only thing special about an assembler or compiler is that it translates programs from one form (source code) to another (machine code).
A typical x86 assembler, for example, would read lines of text with x86 instructions, parse each statement, and then write the binary equivalent of each instruction directly to memory or to a file for later execution.
Assemblers have two big advantages over coding in machine code:
First, they automatically translate strings like
add ax, bx
mov ax, [1000h]
to their corresponding binary form.
Second, and probably even more important, assemblers let you attach labels to statements and refer to them in jump instructions
(a programmer does not have to know the target address of an instruction when specifying targets of jump instructions.)
| <<< | Index | The Assembly Process >>> |