flat assembler g (fasmg) does this. It has a powerful macro language, in which, among other architectures and formats, it implements x86 and ELF/PE/macho and is able to assemble itself.
I like to use it for scripting for turning binary formats to text and vice-versa.
This is very cool. On the topic of assembly, does anyone know of a language that is higher level than assembly, but retains the property that the output doesn't depend on the compiler or its flags?
I want it for low level CPU benchmarks and tests. Using C or assembly for those both suck.
I don't really know exactly how this would look (is the register allocator part of the spec?) but has anyone tried something like this?
There was a post on HN where someone implemented a new language compiler purely from Assembly, and shows you from nothing to the very end where it looked mostly like a LISP assembly language. It was really neat. Sadly I dont have the buzzwords for Google to find it anymore, used to be able to find the powerpoint slides for it.
I forgot about HLA (High Level Assembly) though I have not used it personally, there were also a few others like C-- as well:
That sounds like a tall order. If you want it for CPU benchmarks, you presumably want to be able to use all real CPU machine instructions. Or a simpler language instruction set but with an optimizer, but it's hard to write an optimizer and then you could never change the optimizer.
Yes I know there are some minor caveats with pseudo-instructions and relocations but in general it is basically true. You can't wildly change the output without changing the source like you can with C.
This is great! I did a project just like this one for my Master's thesis at University of Glasgow, although this project looks to be much more mature and advanced (plus it has users!):
This is very cool! I'm always on the lookout for extensible assemblers. I especially want one that can handle a normalized subset of GNU assembly so that it can be used on the output of LLVM or GCC (using existing assembly languages, but assembling them in non-standard ways or with extensions).
I like to use it for scripting for turning binary formats to text and vice-versa.
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