This is more an academic exercise than anything else, but I'm looking to write a recursive function in assembly, that, if it receives and "interrupt signal" it returns to the main function, and not just the function that invoked it (which is usually the same recursive function).
For this test, I'm doing a basic countdown and printing one-character digits (8...7...6...etc.). To simulate an "interrupt", I am using the number 7
, so when the function hits 7 (if it starts above that), it will return a 1
meaning it was interrupted, and if it wasn't interrupted, it'll countdown to zero. Here is what I have thus far:
.globl _start
_start:
# countdown(9);
mov $8, %rdi
call countdown
# return 0;
mov %eax, %edi
mov $60, %eax
syscall
print:
push %rbp
mov %rsp, %rbp
# write the value to a memory location
pushq %rdi # now 16-byte aligned
add $'0', -8(%rbp)
movb $'\n', -7(%rbp)
# do a write syscall
mov $1, %rax # linux syscall write
mov $1, %rdi # file descriptor: stdout=1
lea -8(%rbp), %rsi # memory location of string goes in rsi
mov $2, %rdx # length: 1 char + newline
syscall
# restore the stack
pop %rdi
pop %rbp
ret;
countdown:
# this is the handler to call the recursive function so it can
# pass the address to jump back to in an interrupt as one of the
# function parameters
# (%rsp) currntly holds the return address, and let's pass that as the second argument
mov %rdi, %rdi # redundant, but for clarity
mov (%rsp), %rsi # return address to jump
call countdown_recursive
countdown_recursive:
# bool countdown(int n: n<10, return_address)
# ...{
push %rbp
mov %rsp, %rbp
# if (num<0) ... return
cmp $0, %rdi
jz end
# imaginary interrupt on num=7
cmp $7, %rdi
jz fast_ret
# else...printf("%d\n", num);
push %rsi
push %rdi
call print
pop %rdi
pop %rsi
# --num
dec %rdi
# countdown(num)
call countdown_recursive
end:
# ...}
mov $0, %eax
mov %rbp, %rsp
pop %rbp
ret
fast_ret:
mov $1, %eax
jmp *%rsi
Does the above look like a valid approach, passing the memory address I want to go back to in rsi
? The function was incredibly tricky for me to write, but I think mainly due to the fact that I'm pretty new/raw with assembly.
As well as returning to this alternate return address, you also need to restore the caller's (call-preserved) registers, not just the ones of your most recent parent. That includes RSP.
You're basically trying to re-invent C's setjmp
/ longjmp
which does exactly this, including resetting the stack pointer back to the scope where you called setjmp
. I think a few of the questions in SO's setjmp tag are about about implementing your own setjmp / longjmp in asm.
Also, to make this more efficient you might want to use a custom calling convention where the return address pointer (or a jmpbuf pointer after implementing the above) is in a call-preserved register like R15, so you don't have to save/restore it around print calls inside the body of your recursive function.