DOS ain't dead - NASM 2.10 - revised preprocessor

NASM 2.10 - revised preprocessor (Announce)

posted by ecm , Düsseldorf, Germany, 02.05.2012, 22:16

> Hm I was noticed by some chinese student that my ROMOS sources compiled in
> old NASM doesn't longer works with new NASM 2.10.

Are you referring to the finalised 2.10 using the older preprocessor, or to one of the newer preprocessor revisions in the 2.10 RCs?

> I checked the compilation
> process and no errors/warnings was displayed but the code is different. I'm
> going to analyze whats messed up.

Have you tested that anything is actually messed up, ie that it doesn't work? Newer NASMs optimise better, for example, unconditional jumps are shortened even without explicit "short" keyword, and fitting values will select sign-extending instructions even without explicit "byte" keyword. (I think the latter is new even if you previously already specified -Ox on the command line, which is the default now!) For these reasons, byte-incompatible output might still be correct.

> But this doesn't make me very happy I think that established standard should be kept...

There never was a de jure "established standard", just de facto. And the NASM developer team does seem to attempt to keep that supported. However, primarily with grey areas that weren't communicated in the manual very well, sometimes things are broken.

---
l

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Complete thread:

NASM 2.10 - Rugxulo, 27.03.2012, 00:39 (Announce)
- NASM 2.10 - Rugxulo, 27.03.2012, 00:42
  - NASM 2.10 - marcov, 27.03.2012, 13:07
  - NASM 2.10 - revised preprocessor - ecm, 20.04.2012, 04:26
    - NASM 2.10 - revised preprocessor - RayeR, 02.05.2012, 22:06
      - NASM 2.10 - revised preprocessor - ecm, 02.05.2012, 22:16
        NASM 2.10 - revised preprocessor - RayeR, 02.05.2012, 22:43
        NASM 2.10 - revised preprocessor - ecm, 02.05.2012, 22:48
        NASM 2.10 - revised preprocessor - RayeR, 03.05.2012, 00:04
        NASM 2.10 uses "- Ox" by default - Rugxulo, 03.05.2012, 02:25
        NASM 2.10 uses "-Ox" by default - ecm, 03.05.2012, 02:37
        NASM 2.10 uses "-Ox" by default - Rugxulo, 03.05.2012, 08:18
        NASM 2.10 uses "-Ox" by default - ecm, 03.05.2012, 23:00
        NASM 2.10.01 - Rugxulo, 16.06.2012, 00:24
        NASM 2.10 - revised preprocessor - ecm, 03.05.2012, 02:26