NASM Assembly convert input to integer?

Question

Ok, so I'm fairly new to assembly, infact, I'm very new to assembly. I wrote a piece of code which is simply meant to take numerical input from the user, multiply it by 10, and have the result expressed to the user via the programs exit status (by typing echo $? in terminal) Problem is, it is not giving the correct number, 4x10 showed as 144. So then I figured the input would probably be as a character, rather than an integer. My question here is, how do I convert the character input to an integer so that it can be used in arithmetic calculations?

It would be great if someone could answer keeping in mind that I'm a beginner :) Also, how can I convert said integer back to a character?

section .data

section .bss
input resb 4

section .text

global _start
_start:

mov eax, 3
mov ebx, 0
mov ecx, input
mov edx, 4
int 0x80

mov ebx, 10
imul ebx, ecx

mov eax, 1
int 0x80

Answer 1

Here's a couple of functions for converting strings to integers, and vice versa:

; Input:
; ESI = pointer to the string to convert
; ECX = number of digits in the string (must be > 0)
; Output:
; EAX = integer value
string_to_int:
  xor ebx,ebx    ; clear ebx
.next_digit:
  movzx eax,byte[esi]
  inc esi
  sub al,'0'    ; convert from ASCII to number
  imul ebx,10
  add ebx,eax   ; ebx = ebx*10 + eax
  loop .next_digit  ; while (--ecx)
  mov eax,ebx
  ret


; Input:
; EAX = integer value to convert
; ESI = pointer to buffer to store the string in (must have room for at least 10 bytes)
; Output:
; EAX = pointer to the first character of the generated string
int_to_string:
  add esi,9
  mov byte [esi],STRING_TERMINATOR

  mov ebx,10         
.next_digit:
  xor edx,edx         ; Clear edx prior to dividing edx:eax by ebx
  div ebx             ; eax /= 10
  add dl,'0'          ; Convert the remainder to ASCII 
  dec esi             ; store characters in reverse order
  mov [esi],dl
  test eax,eax            
  jnz .next_digit     ; Repeat until eax==0
  mov eax,esi
  ret

And this is how you'd use them:

STRING_TERMINATOR equ 0

lea esi,[thestring]
mov ecx,4
call string_to_int
; EAX now contains 1234

; Convert it back to a string
lea esi,[buffer]
call int_to_string
; You now have a string pointer in EAX, which
; you can use with the sys_write system call

thestring: db "1234",0
buffer: resb 10

Note that I don't do much error checking in these routines (like checking if there are characters outside of the range '0' - '9'). Nor do the routines handle signed numbers. So if you need those things you'll have to add them yourself.