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From: c164-bd@cinna.uucp (John D. Mitchell)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.programmer
Subject: Re: Microsoft Assembler Complaints
Message-ID: <9109@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 20 Nov 90 21:04:56 GMT
References: <9078@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> <1990Nov20.141330.13358@polyof.poly.edu>
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Reply-To: c164-bd@cinna.UUCP (John D. Mitchell)
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In article <1990Nov20.141330.13358@polyof.poly.edu> ted@polyof.poly.edu (Theodore S. Kapela, Staff) writes:
>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.
>
Not quite.  The 80x86 instruction set has some bizarre quirks (mostly
due to its bastard heritage.  There are some special forms of certain
instructions that are smaller/faster than the regular version.
For example (off the top of my head) there is a version of mov that
is both one byte smaller and executes in less time because it assumes
a ax destination.

Yes, I was originally thinking of jump optimization.

OPTASM has a more powerful macro language than either MASM or TASM.

TASM and OPTASM are faster and have better diagnostics/error messages.

TASM v2.0 has new call syntax that allows for easier multi-high-level-
language interfacing.  Procedure call, entry, and exit are much
more likely to match.  (I.e. procedure argument handling is almost
as easy as C or Pascal).

Thanks,
	John D. Mitchell
	johnm@cory.Berkeley.EDU