Assembly language: what changed
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| 1 | + | Assembly language is the [[Source code|source code]] which is written to be translated by an [[Assembler|assembler]] into the binary executable program which is then run to produce the desired results. | |
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| 3 | + | Programs written in assembly are of three types: | |
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| 5 | + | * Directly written assembly language files created by someone. | |
| 6 | + | * [[Asm|Inline assembly language]] which is included as part of a Pascal source code file which was created by someone. | |
| 7 | + | * Assembly language output of a compiler, e.g. the FPC Pascal Compiler which was automatically generated from the Pascal source code supplied to the [[Compiler|compiler]]. | |
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| 9 | + | Note that directly written/inline assembly code often only works on one specific processor type/family (e.g. Intel i386) or even processor/OS combination (amd64/Windows x64 and amd64/Linux x64) and is therefore not as portable as Pascal code. | |
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| 11 | 11 | However, hand written optimized assembler code may often be faster than machine/compiler-generated assembler code and therefore it is used in tight performance-critical program code at the expense of portability and maintainability. | |
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| 14 | + | *From the Free Pascal wiki, page "Assembly language", as the Internet Archive kept it on 2024-01-21. Copyright stays with the author who wrote it, according to the old wiki's [[Licensing]] page. If you have concerns about this material, [message the admin](/wiki-contact).* |