hutch, question for you

[zemtex]

In your masm1k example. I see that you use polink to merge the code and data section. But you have declared only a code section, my question to you, why so?  :bg

In my understanding, /merge will automatically merge the two for you and automatically fix addresses, am I wrong? You can perfectly define a data section too, but why do you have only a code section?

[hutch--]

Pretty straight forward, I wanted to avoid the extra 512 bytes by having any .DATA or .DATA? section. In anything much larger than a demo like this it just does not matter as you need some form of data that is both read/write. In a simple demo you can put data in the code section if its read only.

[zemtex]

What happens with aligning when you merge the two? Will it be screwed up?

[dedndave]

it may be "screwed up" - lol - or, it may just be misaligned
you can align the data easily enough...

Code Select Expand

        ALIGN   4
        dd ?

you can also put data in the code section and use VirtualProtect to allow the data to be written to

[hutch--]

The align directive works in both the DATA and CODE sections so what you put there should still be there after the sections are merged. Take care with merged sections as there may be cases where DEP from the OS in later versions may complain if the sections are merged.

[zemtex]

dedndave, yes I'm familiar with VirtualProtect.

hutch, DEP is usually only active for system applications, it will not interfere with other apps.

[hutch--]

That depends on your OS settings, you can still configure a computer to run non-DEP apps but you cannot safely distribute that type of code as many machines have it configured to protect all applications.

[zemtex]

True.

If programs need to change access rights, it is most likely a knowledgeable user who is using the program, so I would bet he knows how to handle that. People don't shoot moose unless they want to eat moosemeat.  :P

Unless you're changing access rights on the program just to perform a few "internal tricks" that has little to do with the functionality of the program.