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From: Nikos Vassiliadis <nvass@teledomenet.gr>
To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2007 11:37:16 +0200
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Cc: Patrick Bowen <pbowen@fastmail.fm>
Subject: Re: Assemblers for FreBSD
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On Sunday 11 March 2007 18:52, Patrick Bowen wrote:
> If one wanted to learn Assembly Language Programming, would he be better 
> served starting with as(1) or nasm(1)?

as(1) is the assembler used in the building procedure,
making it your logical choice for operating system
programming. It uses the AT&T syntax of UNIX heritage.
It understands Intel's syntax as well. Keep in mind that
the code in the tree is in AT&T syntax. I guess that
must be true for all Unix-like operating systems. Last
time I checked, nasm was intel only.

I think that nasm mainly served people coming from
DOS, people that already knew the Intel syntax. If
I was about to try assembly, I would learn AT&T. I
think there is more code in Intel syntax though,
mainly in the graphics area.

It depends on what your purpose is. Operating system
programming is dominated by as(1).

> Also, are either of those  
> applicable to AMD64, or just i386?

Since as(1) is the only assembler in the tree, and
FreeBSD can build itself... as(1) supports many
machines...

HTH, Nikos