Re: Structures in Assembly Language

From: Percival (dragontamer5788_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 08/19/04 

Date: 19 Aug 2004 14:56:42 GMT

The Wannabee wrote:
> På 18 Aug 2004 18:07:58 -0700, skrev hutch-- <hutch@movsd.com>:
>
>>> To beginners:
>>
>>
>> This is claptrap, assemblers have had the capacity to write and
>> manipulate structures since before 1990 and structures (C), UDTs
>> (basic), records (pascal) are a normal part of programming. The
>> difference is some assembler CAN handle structures and some CANNOT.
>
>
> Completly wrong. All assembler can handle structures. You confuse what
> structures are.

You are confusing structures vs records i think. Thats how i see it.
Records are basically defines, structures actually support a full
structure, abstracting away from defines. Weather or not its a good
thing, thats sorta the point, to abstract away from seeing ebx+2 and
instead see something like mystruct.x

>> When you have to write code for an operating system that commonly uses
>> structures, you either use an assembler powerful enough to do it
>> easily or get stuck with some dirty fudge to try and emulate something
>> that is very simple.
>
>
> RosAsm is times more powerful than you will ever understand then.

Well, decimal points are "times" :)
J/k. Anyway, true structures with dot notation is something i personally
like. Id have to say RosAsm is different, but that doesn't necessarily
mean its more powerful.

>> The great advantage of using
>> structures is that you can address each member by name and you ALWAYS
>> get the correct address by doing so.
>
>
> LOL . Theres no advantage of using structures. ALL programm must use
> stuctures. Its unavoidable. But you and Randy doesnt understand the
> nature of structure, so you mis out on what they really are. They are
> nothing but writing conventions, rules of how to interpret (FORMAT) a
> chunck of data.

Please, where did they post something wrong in their post? It doesn't
seem to be wrong. And i think your statements are like a contradiction.
No advantage of using structures, all programs must use them?

>> There is nothing clever about
>> manually coding array offsets through multiple levels of indirection,
>> just highly unreliable code that is nearly impossible to debug and
>> fix.
>
>
> Wrong. There are nothing clever about it thats true, but that they lead
> to unreliable code, is untrue. Only writing unreliable leads to that.

Preventing someone from writting unreliably helps a bit too.

>> Its one of th worst kept secrets that Microsoft had technical problems
>> with the design of early 32 bit Windows so they hired a pile of VAX
>> mainframe programmers to design the PE file format used in 32 bit
>> Windows. This is where the nested structures came from and without
>> that capacity, coding Windows assembler is an unreliable unfixable pig
>> that does not work properly.
>
>
> Utterly wrong. Windows expects data, give it the correct data, using any
> method of structure, and it will be fully possible to use it. And WAY
> easier without the silly Record keyword that randy uses. And also using
> RosAsm methods, much easier to learn.

I am utterly confused of what this has anything to do with the subject.

>> This much I will say to programmers who are learning both Windows and
>> assembler coding, don't be mislead by bullsh*t coming out of Betov
>> when he does not have the experience coding Windows software.
>
>
> This is so funny. Betov understand way more then you do. When it comes
> to the nature of stuctures, even _I_ understand more than you do.

Can't argue here. I don't know how much you know, or how much hutch
knows. But it seems as if you both believe that you all have a good
understanding of it.

Percival

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