Re: Re: Perl Operating System

[tachyon]

C might be a horrible language......there's no real alternative to C

MOV AH,02
MOV DL,"A" 
INT 21h
MOV DL,"S" 
INT 21h
MOV DL,"M" 
INT 21h
MOV DL,"?" 
INT 21h
MOV AH,04Ch
MOV AL,00
INT 21h

When you look at the alternative C starts to look pretty damn good! The only advantage of ASM is that the binaries tent to be tiny ie 24 bytes for that example as opposed to 36K for the same thing compiled in C using cl.exe:

perl -e "print pack'H*','b402b241cd21b253cd21b24dcd21b23fcd21b44cb000c
+d21'" > asm.com

[Aristotle]

Though it would look less awful if you had used a string output function instead of one-character-at-a-time I/O. And been smaller, too. (Also: eww, DOS.)

[DrHyde]

Can we also fight over AT&T-style vs Intel-style mnemonics?

[tachyon]

Ahhhhh!!! Assembler GOLF! 21 bytes.... OK so I admit I did not try to make assembler look good. I have always liked the thought that C is a language with all the power of assembler, but with all the user friendliness of ..... assembler.

jmp start
msg db "ASM?$"
start:
mov ah,09
mv dx,offset msg
int 21h
mov ah,4ch
mov al,00
int 21h

[Aristotle]

Oh my, it has been so many years…

mov ah, 09h
mov dx, offset msg
int 21h
ret
msg db "ASM?$"

(The ret is a CP/M remnant. There's an int 20h at the top of the program segment prefix and DOS puts a 0000 word on the stack before it passes control to the program. We are now deep in the dark ages of microcomputer "operating systems".)