Am i on the right track?

[purpleafroman1]

So I've been wanting to learn assembly, and i've recently found this l book. However, when I look at people coding in MASM32 or something else like that, the code is completely different than HLA! For example, (This isn't my code, I found it searching these forums)

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;**************** Procedure to Convert Integer to ASCII ***********************
; Given   :  A pointer to the integer to be converted in the ESI register and a
;            pointer to the output string in EDI
; Process :  Convert the integer to a string of ASCII digits and store the
;         :  string in the address pointed to by EDI.  No registers are changed
;         :  and the flags are not affected.
; Return  :  Nothing
;******************************************************************************
Dec2Ascii PROC NEAR32
        pushad                          ;Save the contents of all registers
        pushfd                          ;
        cld                             ;Set the direction flag for forward
        mov eax,[esi]                   ;copy the integer to eax
        mov ecx,0h                      ;Zero the CX register for digit counter
        mov ebx,10d                     ;Set up divisor of 10 decimal
NextOut:mov edx,0h                      ;Zero EDX reg for high order dword of div
        div ebx                         ;Divide number in EAX by 10d
        push edx                        ;Save remainder on the stack
        inc ecx                         ;Count the digit
        cmp eax,0h                      ;Is number in EAX greater than 0
        ja NextOut                      ;Yes, get next digit
CharOut:pop eax                         ;Get number from the stack
        or eax, 0030h                   ;Convert Int to Ascii by adding 30h
        stosb                           ;  and store  in the destination string
        dec ecx                         ;Reduce characters to print by one
        jnz CharOut                     ;If CX > 0 loop to print next digit
        mov al,0                        ;Place a NULL in AL
        stosb                           ;  and null terminate the string
        popfd                           ;Restore the registers
        popad                           ;
        ret                             ;Return to Calling procedure
Dec2Ascii ENDP

as opposed to...

Code Select Expand


program LogicalOp;

#include( "stdlib.hhf" );

begin LogicalOp;


stdout.put( "Input left operand: " );
stdin.get( eax );

stdout.put( "Input right operand: " );
stdin.get( ebx );


mov( eax, ecx );
and( ebx, ecx );

stdout.put( "$", eax, " AND $", ebx, " = $", ecx, nl );

mov(eax, ecx);
or( ebx, ecx );

stdout.put( "$", eax, " OR $", ebx, " = $", ecx, nl );

mov( eax, ecx );
xor( ebx, ecx );

stdout.put( "$", eax, " XOR $", ebx, " = $", ecx, nl );

mov( ebx, ecx );
not( ecx );

stdout.put( "NOT $", ebx, " = $", ecx, nl );

end LogicalOp;


in HLA. Would I be staying on the right path if i kept using the book above? Or should i switch to another source for learning?

[jj2007]

Depends on what you want. HLA is, as the name says, a High Level Language. It is close to assembler but not the same.

If you want "real" assembler, one "book" is the programmer's guide.

Then there are diverging opinions on what "real" assembler is. One fraction says .Repeat ... .Until is already too high level, others say "everything that gets assembled by MASM" - which includes Let My$="Hello"+CrLf$+"how are you?" if you have the right macros.