DOS ain't dead

Can you top this?

JMPS(S)
=A1= 'Hello World !'
=A2= 0A
=S= AX,B800;ES,AX;AX,3;INT10
CX,(A2-A1);SI,(A1);DI,500
AH,[(A2)]
=L= LODSB;STOSW;LOOP(L)
RET

This was a short example from http://www.evmsoft.net/ru/asm.html.
Another one (from the archive):

  ah,09;dx,(str);int21;ret
=str=   'Hello USSR !!!$'

Now imagine the whole assembler (>32k) is written in this style! The problem is not the syntax itself, although it's different from any other x86 assemblers. But why would anyone format his/her source code like that?

---
Forum admin

Passed through an obfucator? :)

---
DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

> Passed through an obfucator? :)

BTW I don't like AT&T ASM but this seems to be even worse...

---
DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

> This was a short example from
> http://www.evmsoft.net/ru/asm.html.
> Another one (from the archive):
>
>   ah,09;dx,(str);int21;ret
> =str= 'Hello USSR !!!$'

Well-formatted:
=start=
  ah, 09
  dx, (Message)
  int 21
  ret

=Message=
  'hello, world'; 0D; 0A; '$'

---
Forum admin

> Now imagine the whole
> assembler

An x86 assembler in 7,777 bytes is not bad.

---
Forum admin

> An x86 assembler in 7,777 bytes is not bad.

True, although I've not tested that one (yet?).

But that reminds me of the one by Venkat Iyer (actually smaller, barely, ~7200 bytes):

* https://github.com/catb0t/x86-s
* https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/devel/asm/venksi/

IIRC, the LF ending fix (not in a full, newer release) was requested by Fabrice Bellard for his JSLinux since he included it there (for obscure reasons). I'm sure Arjay can tell us more.

I don't have tons of experience with it, only wrote (ported?) like two extremely simple utils to it, for fun. It, too, is a bit quirky in syntax, but it does work! (It can also assemble itself, so that's good.)

On a barely related note:

> BatAs
>
> This is a 8086 assembler written in MSDOS batch. It depends on just two
> utilities: RPN.COM and APPFB.COM, the rest is completely in batch.

No, I haven't tried it, but it sounds interesting!