ASM: MASM, NASM, FASM?

assembly intel nasm masm fasm
user997112 picture user997112 · Apr 16, 2012 · Viewed 23.7k times · Source

I have done ARM assembly programming and I would like to learn the Intel Assembler. I keep hearing all these different F/M/N/ASMs mentioned- but I am unsure how they related to what I wish to achieve?

Could somebody please help me identify what I would need to learn how to program low level on the Intel architecture? I dont quite understand how the "different Assemblers" correlate, even more so with x86, IA64, AMD64/x86-64 etc?

If it is of any help, I am most comfortable with Eclipse and Visual Studio 08/10 IDEs.

Answer

Pavan Manjunath picture Pavan Manjunath · Apr 16, 2012

MASM (Microsoft Assembler) is the popular assembler for Windows. MASM is for 16-bit and 32-bit applications(x86). ML64 is the one for 64 bit sources (AMD64/x86-64)

NASM (Netwide Assembler) is the popular assembler for Linux but is available on Windows too. NASM supports 16-bit, 32 bit and 64 bit programs.

FASM (Flat Assembler) is available for both Windows and Linux. FASM too supports both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.

So I guess you would prefer choosing MASM according to your requirements.

Related questions

What is Intel microcode?

From what I've read it's used to fix bugs in the CPU without modifying the BIOS. From my basic knowledge of Assembly I know that assembly instructions are split into microcodes internally by the CPU and executed accordingly. But intel …

Read More
How do you use gcc to generate assembly code in Intel syntax?

The gcc -S option will generate assembly code in AT&T syntax, is there a way to generate files in Intel syntax? Or is there a way to convert between the two?

Read More
How to generate assembly code with clang in Intel syntax?

As this question shows, with g++, I can do g++ -S -masm=intel test.cpp. Also, with clang, I can do clang++ -S test.cpp, but -masm=intel is not supported by clang (warning argument unused during compilation: -masm=intel). …

Read More