[LLVMdev] Intel vs. AT&T Assembly.

[Chris Lattner]

On Mon, 1 May 2006, Ralph Corderoy wrote:
>> The LLVM X86 backend started out emitting intel mode for use with GAS
>> and it's "intel syntax mode" (which does use registers with %'s).
>> Unfortunately GAS has (or commonly available versions have) a number
>> of bugs in intel syntax mode (e.g. you can't define a function named
>> 'dword'), so we switched to using AT&T syntax.
>
> Ah, OK.  The current gas manual says Intel register operands are
> undelimeted, i.e. no `%'.  Perhaps they've changed.
>
>    http://www.gnu.org/software/binutils/manual/gas-2.9.1/html_chapter/as_16.html#IDX585

Though it really doesn't matter, IIRC, this was to work around bugs in 
GAS.  In particular (again, as I recall, could be wrong), GAS accepted 
registers either with or without % prefixes.  If you used % prefixes, it 
avoided some class of bug that I don't remember any longer.  If you dig 
into the CVS history, looking at the commit that added the % prefixes, 
it will probably explain in further detail.

In any case, I committed a patch to remove the %'s from register names in 
intel mode.

>> Intel syntax mode was retained because it's nicer to read :), and
>> because it may be useful in the future.  As Jeff says, patches are
>> welcome to make it do something useful, e.g. be assemblable with MASM
>> or NASM.
>
> NASM might be the nicer target since it's GNU LGPL and runs on multiple
> OS.  Its home page is broken at the moment, but the manual pages work.
>
>    http://nasm.sourceforge.net/doc/html/nasmdoc0.html

That's fine with me.  The instructions are in true intel mode now, the 
hard part will be to get the pseudo ops to match what the assembler 
expects.

-Chris

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