Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!wiechman From: wiechman@athos.rutgers.edu (NightMeower) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer Subject: Re: Getting started in Assembly on the Mac (HOW?) Message-ID: Date: 15 Feb 89 13:38:12 GMT References: <8902150414.AA06752@jade.berkeley.edu> Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 37 In article <8902150414.AA06752@jade.berkeley.edu> DFJOHN01@ULKYVX.BITNET (GMAIL_FLAG_PERSONAL_NAME) writes: > > My three main reasons for wanting to learn it are: > 1) To understand disassembled code. > 2) To understand "debugger's" language. > 3) To make my code run faster. > > I have purchased all of MPW, including the Pascal & C compilers, the Assembler, > MacApp, SADE and TML, and the TML source code library (which is AWESOME). Can > you advise a soul such as mine as to how to get started with Assembly? > With MPW Pascal (I believe our version is 2.0) the source code is fairly tight. You may be able to do some bit shifts instead of a division by powers of two in some cases. So, reason number three may be partially done for you. I am certain there is a way to compile into assembly code if you'd like to try to optimize it, however just wait until you have thoroughly debugged things. The MPW C compiler is a completely different story. The same algorithm is much slower written in C. If you must start in assembly, there are a number of macros to make your life easier. Many if not all of the flow constructs of Pascal exist, allowing easier coding and in the long run easier maintainence (sp?). Kevin -- =========================================================================== Kevin S. Wiechmann arpa: wiechman@rutgers.rutgers.edu This is only a test... for the next sixty seconds...