Which assembler is best?

[MathFan]

Hi,

I've been thinking about learning some assembly for a long time now, but hadn't really had time to do so. Now my school year is over and I'm free (yepee! ).

When I recently tried to look for some tutorials in asm, I found out that every assembler uses more or less its own notation.

My question is, which one of the assemblers is the best one to start with? I'm a hardcore linux user, and have always used GNU compilers. Is it better then to learn GNU assembler, since it may be is easier to embed asm code into my apps?..

Thanx for any replies...

[SMurf]

TASM R0X0RZ 1N UR B0X0RZ!!!1!!

Erm, well if you're just starting out, you may find it easier to learn using the assembler most tutorials around are made in, which more often than not is the Netwide Assember (NASM).

You could of course just go with your suggestion (the GNU one), I think they may be quite similar. Doesn't really matter which one you use if you're gonna link to high level code, though. Both can do it.

[MathFan]

using the assembler most tutorials around are made in

Yeah, well, that was one of my primary concerns, too. I didn't seem to find many tutorials on GNU Assembler.... But, I probably didn't search too well either.

Doesn't really matter which one you use if you're gonna link to high level code, though

What about inline asm? Then it matters, or does it?

[SMurf]

Inline asm blocks are for the little things that make life great. You know, the right colour birds tweeting, the right breeze across your face...

Scratch that. I mean that it's for doing small things that the compiler either can't do or can't do well. It doesn't involve "proper" assembly language coding per sé, it's just doing some bits and bobs in a "predefined program environment", if you like.

Long story short, people generally learn full assembly first, then they can make decisions on to how best use it inline.

If you forsee a future of inline use rather than actual program development though, pick the one that your compiler uses.

[MathFan]

OK, thank you all for the advise I think I'll go for the GNU Assembler then, since I think I'm going to use inline asm in the future....

[VirtualAce]

NASM. Nuff said.

[CornedBee]

Main difference is that GNU as requires you to postfix every instruction with the operand length, and the arguments are in the reverse order (source first, target last).