adding direct values to addresses

Question

I writing a MIPS program in mars. I am looping through an array of addresses.

I write this:

addi $t4, $t4, 8

where $t4 contains the base address of my array of addresses, and it gets shifted by 8 each time the loop runs. Then, after the loop is done, I store an address at that location.

My question: am I correct in adding 8? or should i add 1(1 byte=8bits, not sure what number to use when adding to addresses...)

Answer 1

You should be adding the size in bytes of each element of the array. Since an address on MIPS is 32 bits (4 bytes), you should add 4.