Learning assembly

Asked 2009-09-01T02:37:43.207

104

I decided to learn Assembly language. The main reason to do so is being able to understand disassembled code and maybe being able to write more efficient parts of code (for example, through c++), doing somethings like code caves, etc. I saw there are a zillion different flavors of assembly, so, for the purposes I mention, how should I start? What kind of assembly should I learn? I want to learn by first doing some easy programs (i.e. a calculator), but the goal itself will be to get accostumed with it so I can understand the code shown, for example, by IDA Pro.

I'm using windows (if that makes any difference).

edit: So, seems everyone is pointing towards MASM. Although I get the point that it has high level capabilities, all good for the assembly code programmer, that's not what I'm looking for. It seems to have if, invoke, etc instructions not shown in popular deassemblers (like IDA). So what I'd like to hear if possible, is the opinion of anyone that uses ASM for the purposes I am asking (reading deassembled exe's code in IDA), not just "general" assembly programmers.

edit: OK. I am already learning assembly. I am learning MASM, not using the high level stuff that doesn't matter to me. What I'm doing right now is trying out my code on __asm directives in c++, so I can try out things way faster than if I had to do everything from scratch with MASM.

assembly

Edit Report

4 Answers

I found Hacking: The Art of Exploitation to be an interesting and useful way into this topic... can't say that I have ever used the knowledge directly, but that's really not why I read it. It gives you a much richer appreciation of the instructions that your code compiles to, which has occasionally been useful in understanding subtler bugs.

Don't be put off by the title. Most of the first part of the book is "Hacking" in the Eric Raymond sense of the word: creative, surprising, almost sneaky ways to solve tough problems. I (and maybe you) was a lot less interested in the security aspects.

answered 2009-09-01T03:10:50.827

I recently took a computer systems class. One of the topics was Assembly as a tool to communicate with the hardware.

For me, the knowledge of assembly wouldn't have been complete without understanding the details of how computer systems work. Understanding that, brings in an new understanding of why assembly instructions on one processor architecture is great but is terrible on another architecture.

Given this, I'm inclined to recommend my class text book:

Computer Systems:A programmer's perspective.

_{(source: cmu.edu)}

It does cover x86 assembly but the book is much more broad than that. It covers processor pipe-lining and memory as a cache, the virtual memory system and much more. All of this can affect how assembly could be optimized for the given features.

answered 2009-09-09T15:43:28.950

I think you want to learn the ASCII-ized opcode mnemonics (and their parameters), which are output by a disassembler and which are understood by (can be used as input to) an assembler.

Any assembler (e.g. MASM) would do.

And/or it might be better for you to read a book about it (there have been books recommended on SO, I don't remember which).

answered 2009-09-01T03:11:07.317

We learned assembly with a microcontroller development kit (Motorola HC12) and a thick datasheet.

answered 2009-09-09T14:47:04.077

Learning assembly

4 Answers

Your Answer