Re: AT&T or Intel syntax ?

Jim Higgins <spamtrap@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:vj7073lcdqis4l9buf4ekb5v042pb5buov@xxxxxxx:
On Tue, 12 Jun 2007 20:44:28 +0200 (CEST), Gil Hamilton
<spamtrap@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Jim Higgins <spamtrap@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:pk8t63pfuasc33hjnit32pr78tvet066u1@xxxxxxx:
On Mon, 11 Jun 2007 17:25:38 +0200 (CEST), Gil Hamilton
<spamtrap@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
IMO, the original imposition of "AT&T syntax" on the Intel platform
was simply arrogance on the part of the gnu folks who thought at the
time that the Intel 8086/286/386/etc. was a junky piece of crap
compared to other more "elegant" architectures of the time like the
Motorola 68000 family. ("And, see, we can make it look almost like
a real machine if we redesign their stupid assembly language for
them.")

Perhaps arrogance had less to do with the decision than how much
easier it was to write an asembler for AT&T syntax.

That may well apply to some syntactic aspects but it's not really
relevant to operand order.

True, but relative ease of writing an assembler for the AT&T syntax
(which includes far more differences from Intel syntax than just order
of operands) is pretty much a fact while debates over which is the
proper/best order for operands falls squarely into the arena of
"religious" opinion.

It is no harder to write an assembler with the "Intel" order than the
AT&T order. I fully agree that the choice of ordering is strictly
religious. My point was that once *Intel* made that religious choice,
it's confusing and counterproductive for someone else to come along and
make a different choice. Everyone who does any serious assembly
programming will soon need to consult the Intel reference document that
describes all of the instructions and their effects. By choosing a
different ordering, the human reader is required to reverse everything
displayed in the Intel manual before writing their assembly code. And
any other things (like the 'jl', 'jg', etc. mnemonics) that rely on the
order now require more effort to understand on the part of the
programmer.

GH

.

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