JEFF DUNTEMANN is an accomplished author of both science fiction and technical nonfiction. He has published dozens of technical articles in magazines, co-founded The Coriolis Group, a large publishing house in Arizona, and works as a technical publishing consultant. He owns Copperwood Press, a POD imprint hosted on amazon.com.

• Introduction xxixChapter 1 It’s All in the Plan 1Another Pleasant Valley Saturday 1Had This Been the Real Thing 5Assembly Language Programming As a Square Dance 5Assembly Language Programming As a Board Game 6Chapter 2 Alien Bases 11The Return of the New Math Monster 11Octal: How the Grinch Stole Eight and Nine 16Hexadecimal: Solving the Digit Shortage 20From Hex to Decimal and from Decimal to Hex 24Practice. Practice! PRACTICE! 27Arithmetic in Hex 28Binary 34Hexadecimal as Shorthand for Binary 38Prepare to Compute 40Chapter 3 Lifting the Hood 41RAXie, We Hardly Knew Ye 41Switches, Transistors, and Memory 43The Shop Supervisor and the Assembly Line 54The Box That Follows a Plan 58What vs. How: Architecture and Microarchitecture 63Enter the Plant Manager 67Chapter 4 Location, Location, Location 73The Joy of Memory Models 73The Nature of Segments 80Segment Registers 87The Four Major Assembly Programming Models 9564-Bit Long Mode 101Chapter 5 The Right to Assemble 103The Nine and Sixty Ways to Code 103Files and What’s Inside Them 104Text In, Code Out 115The Assembly Language Development Process 123Linking the Object Code File 130Taking a Trip Down Assembly Lane 134Chapter 6 A Place to Stand, with Access to Tools 143Integrated Development Environments 143Introducing SASM 146Linux and Terminals 153Using Linux Make 164Debugging with SASM 172Chapter 7 Following Your Instructions 175Build Yourself a Sandbox 176Instructions and Their Operands 178Source and Destination Operands 178Rally Round the Flags, Boys! 186Signed and Unsigned Values 195Implicit Operands and MUL 200Reading and Using an Assembly Language Reference 205NEG Negate (Two’s Complement; i.e., Multiply by −1) 208Chapter 8 Our Object All Sublime 213The Bones of an Assembly Language Program 213Last In, First Out via the Stack 223Using Linux Kernel Services Through Syscall 231Designing a Nontrivial Program 235Going Further 248Chapter 9 Bits, Flags, Branches, and Tables 251Bits Is Bits (and Bytes Is Bits) 251Shifting Bits 258Bit-Bashing in Action 262Flags, Tests, and Branches 270X64 Long Mode Memory Addressing in Detail 279Character Table Translation 290Tables Instead of Calculations 298Chapter 10 Dividing and Conquering 299Boxes within Boxes 300Calling and Returning 309Local Labels and the Lengths of Jumps 325Building External Procedure Libraries 330The Art of Crafting Procedures 352Simple Cursor Control in the Linux Console 356Creating and Using Macros 364Chapter 11 Strings and Things 377The Notion of an Assembly Language String 378REP STOSB, the Software Machine Gun 387The Semiautomatic Weapon: STOSB Without REP 392MOVSB: Fast Block Copies 397Storing Data to Discontinuous Strings 402Command-Line Arguments, String Searches, and the Linux Stack 408The Stack, Its Structure, and How to Use It 414Chapter 12 Heading Out to C 423What’s GNU? 424Linking to the Standard C Library 429Formatted Text Output with printf() 438Data In with fgets() and scanf() 442Be a Linux Time Lord 448Understanding AT&T Instruction Mnemonics 456Generating Random Numbers 460How C Sees Command-Line Arguments 472Simple File I/O 474Conclusion: Not the End, But Only the Beginning 489Appendix A The Return of the Insight Debugger 493Insight’s Shortcomings 494Opening a Program Under Insight 495Setting Command-Line Arguments with Insight 496Running and Stepping a Program 496The Memory Window 497Showing the Stack in Insight’s Memory View 498Examining the Stack with Insight’s Memory View 498Learn gdb! 500Appendix B Partial x64 Instruction Reference 501What’s Been Removed from x64 502Flag Results 502Size Specifiers 503Instruction Index 505ADC: Arithmetic Addition with Carry 507ADD: Arithmetic Addition 509AND: Logical AND 511BT: Bit Test 513CALL: Call Procedure 515CLC: Clear Carry Flag (CF) 517CLD: Clear Direction Flag (DF) 518CMP: Arithmetic Comparison 519DEC: Decrement Operand 521DIV: Unsigned Integer Division 522INC: Increment Operand 524J??: Jump If Condition Is Met 525JECXZ: Jump if ECX=0 527JRCXZ: Jump If RCX=0 528JMP: Unconditional Jump 529LEA: Load Effective Address 531LOOP: Loop Until CX/ECX/RCX=0 532LOOPNZ/LOOPNE: Loop Until CX/ECX/RCX=0 and ZF=0 534LOOPZ/LOOPE: Loop Until CX/ECX/RCX=0 and ZF=1 535MOV: Copy Right Operand into Left Operand 536MOVS: Move String 538MOVSX: Copy with Sign Extension 540MUL: Unsigned Integer Multiplication 542NEG: Negate (Two’s Complement; i.e., Multiply by −1) 544NOP: No Operation 546NOT: Logical NOT (One’s Complement) 547OR: Logical OR 548POP: Copy Top of Stack into Operand 550POPF/D/Q: Copy Top of Stack into Flags Register 552PUSH: Push Operand onto Top of Stack 553PUSHF/D/Q: Push Flags Onto the Stack 555RET: Return from Procedure 556ROL/ROR: Rotate Left/Rotate Right 558SBB: Arithmetic Subtraction with Borrow 560SHL/SHR: Shift Left/Shift Right 562STC: Set Carry Flag (CF) 564STD: Set Direction Flag (DF) 565STOS/B/W/D/Q: Store String 566SUB: Arithmetic Subtraction 568SYSCALL: Fast System Call into Linux 570XCHG: Exchange Operands 571XLAT: Translate Byte Via Table 572XOR: Exclusive OR 573Appendix C Character Set Charts 575Index 579