I am currently taking an assembly course and I have a homework question I want to make sure is correct. My question states:
Give an array named array1 with the values 1000h, 2000h, 3000h, 4000h, 5000h and another array named array2 with the values 11111h, 22222h, 33333h, 44444h, 55555h. Use a loop to swap the nth position elements from array1 and array2.
I wrote this code:
; AddTwo.asm - adds two 32-bit integers.
; Chapter 3 example
.386
.model flat,stdcall
.stack 4096
INCLUDE Irvine32.inc ; including the library onto the program
ExitProcess proto,dwExitCode:dword
.data
array1 WORD 1000h, 2000h, 3000h, 4000h, 5000h
array2 DWORD 11111h, 22222h, 33333h, 44444h, 55555h
.code
main proc
mov ecx, 5
mov esi, offset Array1 ; esi points to beginning of Array1
mov edi, offset Array2
L1:
xchg edi, esi ; swaps values of array1 (esi) and array2 (edi)
add esi, 4 ; increments the address to next element
add edi, 4
loop L1 ; will loop through label 1 amount of times ecx is
call DumpRegs ; main utility call to display all registers and status flags
invoke ExitProcess,0
main endp
end main
My code compiles, but I am not 100% certain if this correct. Any help will be greatly appreciated.
array1 WORD 1000h, 2000h, 3000h, 4000h, 5000h array2 DWORD 11111h, 22222h, 33333h, 44444h, 55555h
If you want a chance of a succesful swap then you need to define both arrays of the same size. How could you store a DWORD in a WORD-sized location?
Don't choose a data format based on the example numbers that you got, but rather base your selection on what your program is supposed to achieve.
xchg edi, esi ; swaps values of array1 (esi) and array2 (edi)
This only swaps the pointers, not the data that they refer to!
Next code does swap 2 DWORD sized elements:
mov eax, [esi]
mov edx, [edi]
mov [esi], edx
mov [edi], eax
As an optimization you should replace the loop L1
instruction by
dec ecx
jnz L1
It's faster!