Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!yale!cmcl2!polyof!ted
From: ted@polyof.poly.edu (Theodore S. Kapela, Staff)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.programmer
Subject: Re: Microsoft Assembler Complaints
Message-ID: <1990Nov20.141330.13358@polyof.poly.edu>
Date: 20 Nov 90 14:13:30 GMT
References: <9078@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
Distribution: comp
Organization: Polytechnic University
Lines: 36

In article <9078@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> c164-bd@cinna.UUCP (John D. Mitchell) writes:

 [text deleted]

>Both OPTASM (by SLR Systems) and TASM (v2.0) are at least two or
>three times as fast as MASM, produce better code, and have more
                              ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I don't know about anyone else, but I don't want the assembler I am using
to 'produce' any code that I haven't written.  I expect it to generate
the correct machine code instructions for the assembler instructions
I wrote.  And, the last I checked, there is a unique pattern of bits for
each mnemonic (but not necesarily the other way around); ie: each
instruction can only be coded one way, although some instructions share
the same bit pattern.  JNZ and JNE are just one pair I can think of.

If you mean such things as 'nop crunching', you are correct.  MASM has
a nice little habit of putting 'nop's to fill instructions it expects to 
be a certain size (eg: a jmp instruction (relative) is expected to be
a total of three bytes.  If the jmp happens to be a short jmp (offset
fits in a byte), it generates the appropriate code, but adds a nop to
fill the instruction to three bytes).  I have used both MASM and TASM.
I am getting to like TASM better, especially because it is quite a
bit faster.

>
>Good luck,
>	John D. Mitchell
>	johnm@cory.Berkeley.EDU


-- 
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    Theodore S. Kapela                  (516) 755-4299 [Voice, Days]
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           "Another brilliant mind corrupted by education"