assembly

[rous]

I'm in the middle of learning assembly for Mac OS X--a difficult task considering most of the good tutorials (Art of Assembly Language is, by far, the best I've found) are written for x86 chips. Even Apples guides assume knowledge of x86 assembly first...sigh, I just had to get this off my chest.

rous

[kw]

It's a bit of a tricky area. Not much system info available for macs.. Makes sense though, but iirc I said that earlier :P
Good luck on your search, I'll try to help answer your questions if I can (which I doubt actually ;))

Greets,
KW

[rous]

Thanks:) What I decided to do is just write simple programs in C, then compile them into assembly. I'm cross referencing the output with motorola's processor user guide(s). It's actually moving along pretty quickly now...

By the way; the fact that you guys are able to identify key structures (functions, variables, branches, loops, etc.) in disassembled code is really quite amazing.

[kw]

A lot of structures are quite easy to identify..
Like a simple if(a==3)/else statement, would look (in x86 asm) like this:
cmp dword ptr[ADDR_OF_A], 3
jnz _else
..code if a was 3
jmp _end_of_if
_else:
..code if a was not 3
_end_of_if:

Things like that are quite easy to recognize, especially after a while. You seem to be using a good approach though, starting from your own programs is a good way to do it, since you know what you're supposed to be seeing. It will make it easier to recognize parts you know are in there.

-kw

[rous]

Thanks :) I'm learning a lot about my system. I think Im going to start a new topic because i have some questions now that ive learned alittle.