ASM: MASM, NASM, FASM?

Question

I have done ARM assembly programming and I would like to learn the Intel Assembler. I keep hearing all these different F/M/N/ASMs mentioned- but I am unsure how they related to what I wish to achieve?

Could somebody please help me identify what I would need to learn how to program low level on the Intel architecture? I dont quite understand how the "different Assemblers" correlate, even more so with x86, IA64, AMD64/x86-64 etc?

If it is of any help, I am most comfortable with Eclipse and Visual Studio 08/10 IDEs.

Answer 1

MASM (Microsoft Assembler) is the popular assembler for Windows. MASM is for 16-bit and 32-bit applications(x86). ML64 is the one for 64 bit sources (AMD64/x86-64)

NASM (Netwide Assembler) is the popular assembler for Linux but is available on Windows too. NASM supports 16-bit, 32 bit and 64 bit programs.

FASM (Flat Assembler) is available for both Windows and Linux. FASM too supports both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.

So I guess you would prefer choosing MASM according to your requirements.

Answer 2

Just to tell about it, RosAsm is a windows only 32 bits assembler that has several interresting points like

• an integrated IDE that is self-compiled with available source code
• a NASM inspired syntax
• a powerful macro system for high level language design
• the particularity to store the source code inside the produced .exe and .dll (in a PE section).

Concerning the 64 bits support, RosAsm has none but one of its contributors is currently working on a 64 bits rewrite (BUAsm, the Bottom-Up assembler)