Assembler directives

and basic steps of ALP

BY
DR. URVASHI SINGH
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR
DELHI TECHNICAL CAMPUS
GGSIP UNIVERSITY
GREATER NOIDA (INDIA)
ASSEMBLER DIRECTIVES

Assembly language: low-level languages for

programming computers, microprocessors,
microcontrollers, and other IC

Assembler Directive: a statement to give direction to the
assembler to perform task of the assembly process.

control the organization of the program

provide necessary information to the assembler to understand ALPs
and generate necessary machine codes

Indicate how an operand or a section of the program is to be
processed by the assembler
 Consists of two types of statements: instructions and directives

Instructions: translated to the machine code by the assembler

Directives are not translated to the machine codes
 Important terms and rules

SYMBOLS: to signify different components of the ALP (assembly Language

Program)

Symbols consist of following characters:-
 Upper case & lower case alphabets: A to Z; a to z
 Digits: 0 to 9
 Special characters: $, ?, @, _ (underscore)
 No distinction between an uppercase and lowercase letter
 A hexadecimal no. starting with A to F must begin with “0” (zero) ; otherwise will be taken as a symbol

VARIABLE: these are symbols whose values can be varied while running a program

Names of variables: should be meaningful to make program maintenance easy

A variable can use: A to Z; a to z; 0 to 9; @; _ (underscore)

Digit can not be used as 1st character of an Assembler variable

CONSTANT: these are symbols whose values can not be varies while running a
program

A numeric constant may be a binary, decimal or hexadecimal number.

Symbols B, D & H must be used at the end of a binary, decimal and hexadecimal number,
respectively.
 Important Assembler Directives of the 8086
Microprocessor

Data declaration directives: DB, DW, DD, DQ, DT

ASSUME

END directives

EQU Directive

PROC

ORG

SEGMENT

GROUP, INCLUDE, EVEN, ALIGN

EXTRN, PUBLIC,

TYPE, PTR,

LENGTH, OFFSET

NAME, LABEL, SHORT, GLOBAL
 Data declaration directives

1. DB - The DB directive is used to declare a BYTE -2-BYTE variable - A BYTE

is made up of 8 bits.

examples:

PRICES DB 49H, 98H, 29H; Declare array of 3 bytes named PRICES and initialize them
with specified values

TEMP DB 100 DUP (?); Set aside 100 bytes of storage in memory and give it the name
TEMP. But leave the 100 bytes un-initialized
2. DW - The DW directive is used to declare a WORD type variable - A WORD
occupies 16 bits or (2 BYTE).

examples:

WORDS DW 1234H, 3456H; Declares an array of 2 words and initialize them with the
specified values
3. DD - The DD directive is used to declare a DWORD - A DWORD double
word is made up of 32 bits =2 Word's or 4 BYTE.

examples:

ARRAY DD 25629261H; This will define a double word named ARRAY and initialize the
double word with the specified value when the program is loaded into memory to be run.
The low word, 9261H, will be put in memory at a lower address than the high word.
 Data declaration directives (cont.)

DQ (DEFINE QUADWORD)
The DQ directive is used to tell the assembler to declare a variable 4 words
in length or to reserve 4 words of storage in memory.

Example:
BIG_NUMBER DQ 243598740192A92BH; This will declare a variable named
BIG_NUMBER and initialize the 4 words set aside with the specified number when the
program is loaded into memory to be run.

DT (DEFINE TEN BYTES)

The DT directive is used to tell the assembler to declare a variable, which is
10 bytes in length or to reserve 10 bytes of storage in memory.

Example:
PACKED_BCD DT 11223344556677889900
This will declare an array named PACKED_BCD, which is 10 bytes in length. It will initialize
the 10 bytes with the values 11, 22, 33, 44, 55, 66, 77, 88, 99, and 00 when the program is
loaded into memory to be run. The statement RESULT DT 20H DUP (0) will declare an
array of 20H blocks of 10 bytes each and initialize all 320 bytes to 00 when the program is
loaded into memory to be run.
 ASSUME DIRECTIVE

ASSUME Directive - The ASSUME directive is used to tell the

assembler that the name of the logical segment should be used
for a specified segment. The 8086 works directly with only 4
physical segments: a Code segment, a data segment, a stack
segment, and an extra segment.

Example:

ASSUME CS:CODE ;This tells the assembler that the logical
segment named CODE contains the instruction statements for
the program and should be treated as a code segment.

ASSUME DS:DATA ;This tells the assembler that for any

instruction which refers to a data in the data segment, data
will found in the logical segment DATA.
 End directive

END - End Program

ENDP - End Procedure

ENDS - End Segment

END – it signifies the end of the program module

The assembler will ignore any statement after an END directive

ENDP - indicates the end of a procedure

Syntax: Procedure_name ENDP

ENDS - indicates the end of a logical segment

Syntax: Segment_name ENDS
 Equate (EQU) Directive

EQU - This EQU directive is used to give a name to some

value or to a symbol. Each time the assembler finds the
name in the program, it will replace the name with the
value or symbol you given to that name.

Example:

FACTOR EQU 03H ; you has to write this statement at the starting of
your program

later in the program you can use this as follows :

ADD AL, FACTOR ; When it codes this instruction the assembler will
code it as ADDAL, 03H ;The advantage of using EQU in this manner
is, if FACTOR is used many no of times in a program and you want to
change the value, all you had to do is change the EQU statement at
beginning, it will changes the rest of all.
 PROC (Procedure) Directive

PROC - The PROC directive is used to identify the

start of a procedure. The term near or far is used to
specify the type of the procedure.

Example:

SMART PROC FAR ; This identifies that the start of a
procedure named as SMART and instructs the assembler that
the procedure is far .

SMART ENDP ; This PROC is used with ENDP to indicate the
break of the procedure.
 ORG (ORIGIN)

ORG Changes the starting offset address of the data in the data
segment. As an assembler assembles a section of a data declarations
or instruction statements, it uses a location counter to keep track of
how many bytes it is from the start of a segment at any time.

The location counter is automatically set to 0000 when assembler

starts reading a segment.

The ORG directive allows you to set the location counter to a desired
value at any point in the program.
Example:

The statement ORG 2000H tells the assembler to set the location counter to
2000H.
 SEGMENT

SEGMENT directive : to indicate the start of a logical segment

Syntax: Segment_name SEGMENT

Additional terms are often added to a SEGMENT directive
statement to indicate some special way in which we want the
assembler to treat the segment.
Example:

CODE SEGMENT WORD ; tells the assembler that we want the content
of this segment located on the next available word (even address) when
segments are combined and given absolute addresses.

Without this WORD addition, the segment will be located on the next
available paragraph (16-byte) address, which might waste as much as 15
bytes of memory.

The statement CODE SEGMENT PUBLIC tells the assembler that the
segment may be put together with other segments named CODE from
other assembly modules when the modules are linked together.
 GROUP, INCLUDE, EVEN, ALIGN

GROUP - used to group the logical segments named after the

directive into one logical group segment.

INCLUDE - used to insert a block of source code from the named
file into the current source module.

EVEN - instructs the assembler to increment the location of the
counter to the next even address if it is not already in the even
address.

If the word is at even address 8086 can read a memory in 1 bus cycle. If the word
starts at an odd address, the 8086 will take 2 bus cycles to get the data.

A series of words can be read much more quickly if they are at even address.
When EVEN is used the location counter will simply incremented to next address
and NOP instruction is inserted in that incremented location.

ALIGN: Memory array is stored in word boundaries.

Example:

ALIGN 2 means storing from an even address
 EXTRN, PUBLIC

EXTRN : used to tell the assembler that the name or labels following the
directive are in some other assembly module.

For example, if you want to call a procedure, which in a program module assembled at a
different time from that which contains the CALL instruction, you must tell the assembler
that the procedure is external. The assembler will then put this information in the object
code file so that the linker can connect the two modules together.
For a reference to externally named variable, you must specify the type of the variable, as in
the statement EXTRN DIVISOR: WORD. The statement EXTRN DIVIDE: FAR tells the
assembler that DIVIDE is a label of type FAR in another assembler module. Name or labels
referred to as external in one module must be declared public with the PUBLIC directive in
the module in which they are defined.

PUBLIC - The PUBLIC directive is used to instruct the assembler that a
specified name or label will be accessed from other modules.

Example:

PUBLIC DIVISOR, DIVIDEND ;these two variables are public so these are available to all
modules. If an instruction in a module refers to a variable in another assembly module, we
can access that module by declaring as EXTRN directive.
 TYPE, PTR(POINTER)

TYPE - instructs the assembler to determine the type of a variable and

determines the number of bytes specified to that variable.
Example:

Byte type variable – assembler will give a value 1 Word type variable – assembler will give a
value 2 Double word type variable – assembler will give a value 4 ADD BX, TYPE WORD_
ARRAY ; hear we want to increment BX to point to next word in an array of words.

PTR (POINTER) : used to assign a specific type to a variable or a label. It is

necessary to do this in any instruction where the type of the operand is not
clear.
Example:

INC [BX]; It will not know whether to increment the byte pointed to by BX. We use the
PTR operator to clarify how we want the assembler to code the instruction.

INC BYTE PTR [BX] ; This statement tells the assembler that we want to increment the
byte pointed to by BX.

INC WORD PTR [BX] ; This statement tells the assembler that we want to increment the
word pointed to by BX. The PTR operator assigns the type specified before PTR to the
variable specified after PTR.
 LENGTH, OFFSET

LENGTH : tells the assembler to determine the number of

elements in some named data item, such as a string or an array.

Example:

MOV CX, LENGTH STRING1; This will determine the number of elements in
STRING1 and load it into CX. If the string was declared as a string of bytes,
LENGTH will produce the number of bytes in the string. If the string was
declared as a word string, LENGTH will produce the number of words in the
string.

OFFSET : tells the assembler to determine the offset or

displacement of a named data item (variable), a procedure from the
start of the segment, which contains it.

Example:

MOV BX, OFFSET PRICES; It will determine the offset of the variable PRICES
from the start of the segment in which PRICES is defined and will load this value
into BX.
 NAME, LABEL, SHORT, GLOBAL

NAME : used to give a specific name to each assembly module when programs consisting of
several modules are written.

LABEL : As an assembler assembles a section of a data declarations or instruction statements,
it uses a location counter to be keep track of how many bytes it is from the start of a segment at
any time.

If the label is going to be used as the destination for a jump or a call, then the label must be
specified as type near or type far.

SHORT
The SHORT operator is used to tell the assembler that only a 1 byte displacement is
needed to code a jump instruction in the program. The destination must in the range of –
128 bytes to +127 bytes from the address of the instruction after the jump.
Example: JMP SHORT NEARBY_LABEL

GLOBAL (DECLARE SYMBOLS AS PUBLIC OR EXTRN) : can be used in place of a

PUBLIC directive or in place of an EXTRN directive. For a name or symbol defined in the
current assembly module, the GLOBAL directive is used to make the symbol available to other
modules.

Example:
GLOBAL DIVISOR
This statement makes the variable DIVISOR public so that it can be accessed from
other assembly modules.


 8086 Programming using Assembler Directives

Basic structure of a program:

Name_data segment SEGMENT
Data declaration statement 1
:
:
Data declaration statement n
DATA ENDS
Name_codeseg SEGMENT
ASSUME CS:CODE, DS:DATA, ES:EXTRA, SS: STACK
START:
Program line 1
:
:
Program line n
Name_codeseg ENDS
END START
 example

Program to multiply 2 16-bit words in memory locations called MULTIPLICAND

and MULTIPLIER. Result is stored in memory location PRODUCT.
DATA SEGMENT
MULTIPLICAND DW 204A H; 1ST Word
MULTIPLIER DW 3B2A H; 2nd word
PRODUCT DW 2 DUP(0); sets aside storage for 2 words in memory and gives starting address of 1st word
the name PRODUCT. The DUP(0) part of the statement tells assembler to initialize 2 words to all zeros.
DATA ENDS
CODE SEGMENT
ASSUMER CS:CODE, DS:DATA;
START:
MOV AX, DATA
MOV DS, AX
MOV AX, MULTIPLICAND;
MUL MULTIPLIER;
MOV PRODUCT, AX;
MOV PRODUCT+2, DX;
INT3
CODE ENDS
END START
Thank you