Re: while trying to learn pack

[rob.dixon@xxxxxxx (Rob Dixon)]

Richard Lee wrote:
>
> I am begining to read bit of low level(assembly) book to just gain some 
> knoweldge on inner workings of memory.
> 
> My quesiton is, if machine is 32 bit, even if it's accessing string 'A', 
> it will have to fetch 32 bit (instead of 8 bit that requires to make 
> that letter A ) ?
> 
> I know this is not a mailing list for this but i figure since it's 
> closely related to pack, i thought someone would clarify for me.
> 
> I am reading "step by step assembly language"... I am not sure i will 
> read the whole thing but i just want to get better inner working of 
> memory as my c book didn't do enough justice.

It is the addressing that is 32-bit, not the data. Assembly languages will
generally have instructions like

 - move byte
 - move word
 - move longword
 - move quadword

and so on.

The main difference between machine architecture is the order in which bytes
appear in multi-byte binary values. Most have the least-significant byte at the
lowest address, but Motorola processors and a few others have the order
reversed. You will see provision for the different ordering in the formats
available in a call to pack.

HTH,

Rob