iv
The first version of this book discussed using the yasm assembler and
the gdb debugger directly. Now the author provides a free integrated
development environment named “ebe”, which automates the process of
using yasm. The ebe environment is a GUI program written in C++ using
the Qt system and supports C, C++ and FORTRAN in addition to
assembly language, though its purpose is to support assembly
programming. There was a previous version of ebe written in Python, but
the newer version offers many more features. The Qt version of ebe is
available at http://qtebe.sourceforge.net.
This version of the book discusses assembly programming for the
Windows operating system. There is a companion book discussing
assembly programming for Linux and OS X which use a different function
call interface. There is a discussion of the function call protocol differences
for Linux, OS X and Windows, so having one of the two books should be
sufficient for someone interested in programming on multiple operating
systems.
The Linux/OS X book contains examples using gdb for debugging. Alas
this seems to be impractical under Windows and, in fact, under OS X. The
yasm assembly does not generate sufficient information under Windows
or OS X to determine source code line numbers from memory addresses.
Ebe uses the yasm listing file along with the addresses of global symbols
like main to build translations internally while using memory addresses
for breakpoints and to determine line numbers with gdb. The ebe user
perceives a simple interface, but using gdb manually would require the
user to compute addresses for break points and observe source code in a
separate window. For this reason this book has abandoned the use of
debugging with gdb,
Another issue with Windows is the prevalence of assembly code
examples built around structured exception handling (SEH). The idea
there is to augment the code with data which describes the stack frame
and register usage in such a manner that SEH can “unwind” the stack to
determine which exception handler is the first to be found to handle a
particular exception. Exception handling is arguably a critical feature in
C++, but it is possibly too cumbersome for beginning assembly
programmers. The model used in the book is compatible with C and far
simpler than the code one finds which addresses SEH. Most likely any
assembly code used in C++ will be used for high efficiency and will not
generate any exceptions, so I feel the decision to write simpler assembly
code is useful in practice in addition to being far easier to understand.
Due to costs this book is printed in black and white. The pictures
captured from ebe would have been prettier and perhaps more useful in
color, but the cost of the book would have been roughly double the cost of
a black and white version. The added utility of color is certainly not worth
