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Netwide Assembler

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Netwide Assembler

Netwide Assembler
NASM logo
Original author(s) Simon Tatham, Julian Hall
Developer(s) H. Peter Anvin, et al.
Stable release 2.11.06 / October 20, 2014 (2014-10-20)
Operating system Microsoft Windows, Unix-like, OS/2, OS X, DOS
Available in English
Type x86 assembler
License 2-clause BSD
Website .us.nasmwww


NASM was originally written by Simon Tatham with assistance from Julian Hall and is currently maintained by a small team led by H. Peter Anvin.[2] It is available as free software under the terms of the simplified (2-clause) BSD license.[3]


NASM can output several binary formats including COFF, Portable Executable, a.out, ELF, Mach-O and .bin (binary disk image, used for compiling operating systems), though position-independent code is only supported for ELF object files. NASM also has its own binary format called RDOFF.[4]

The variety of output formats allows programs to be retargeted to virtually any x86 operating system. In addition, NASM can create flat binary files, usable in writing boot loaders, ROM images, and in various facets of OS development.[4] NASM can run on non-x86 platforms, such as SPARC and PowerPC, though it cannot generate programs usable by those machines.

NASM uses a variation of Intel assembly syntax instead of AT&T syntax.[5] It also avoids features such as automatic generation of segment overrides (and the related ASSUME directive) used by MASM and compatible assemblers.[4]

Examples of programs for various operating systems

This is a "Hello, world!" program for the DOS operating system.

section .text
org 0x100
        mov     ah, 0x9
        mov     dx, hello
        int     0x21

        mov     ax, 0x4c00
        int     0x21

section .data

An example of a similar program for Microsoft Windows:

global _main
extern _MessageBoxA@16
extern _ExitProcess@4

section code use32 class=code
        push    dword 0      ; UINT uType = MB_OK
        push    dword title  ; LPCSTR lpCaption
        push    dword banner ; LPCSTR lpText
        push    dword 0      ; HWND hWnd = NULL
        call    _MessageBoxA@16

        push    dword 0      ; UINT uExitCode
        call    _ExitProcess@4

section data use32 class=data
        banner: db 'Hello, world!', 0
        title:  db 'Hello', 0

An equivalent program for Linux:

global _start

section .text
        mov     eax, 4 ; write
        mov     ebx, 1 ; stdout
        mov     ecx, msg
        mov     edx, msg.len
        int     0x80   ; write(stdout, msg, strlen(msg));

        mov     eax, 1 ; exit
        mov     ebx, 0
        int     0x80   ; exit(0)

section .data
msg:    db      "Hello, world!", 10
.len:   equ     $ - msg

Below is a 64-bit program for Apple OS X that inputs a keystroke and shows it on the screen

global _start

section .data

        query_string:           db      "Enter a character:  "
        query_string_len:       equ     $ - query_string
        out_string:                     db      "You have input:  "
        out_string_len:         equ     $ - out_string

section .bss

        in_char:                        resw 4

section .text


        mov     rax, 0x2000004          ; put the write-system-call-code into register rax
        mov     rdi, 1                          ; tell kernel to use stdout
        mov     rsi, query_string       ; rsi is where the kernel expects to find the address of the message
        mov     rdx, query_string_len   ; and rdx is where the kernel expects to find the length of the message 

        ; read in the character
        mov     rax, 0x2000003          ; read system call
        mov     rdi, 0                          ; stdin
        mov     rsi, in_char            ; address for storage, declared in section .bss
        mov     rdx, 2                          ; get 2 bytes from the kernel's buffer (one for the carriage return)

        ; show user the output
        mov     rax, 0x2000004          ; write system call
        mov     rdi, 1                          ; stdout
        mov     rsi, out_string
        mov     rdx, out_string_len

        mov     rax, 0x2000004          ; write system call
        mov     rdi, 1                          ; stdout
        mov     rsi, in_char
        mov     rdx, 2                          ; the second byte is to apply the carriage return expected in the string

        ; exit system call
        mov     rax, 0x2000001          ; exit system call
        mov     rdi, 0


NASM principally outputs object files, which are generally not executable in and of themselves. The only exception to this are flat binaries (e.g., .COM)[4] which are inherently limited in modern use. To translate the object files into executable programs, an appropriate linker must be used, such as the Visual Studio "LINK" utility for Windows or ld for UNIX-like systems.


On 28 November 2007, version 2.00 was released, adding support for Git repository with binary snapshots available from the project web page.

A search engine for NASM docs is also available.[6]



Developed by Julian Hall
Type of format Object file format
Container for Object code

RDOFF (Relocatable Dynamic Object File Format) is used by developers to test the integrity of NASM's object file output capabilities. It is based heavily on the internal structure of NASM,[7] essentially consisting of a header containing a serialization of the output driver function calls followed by an array of sections containing executable code or data. Tools for using the format, including a linker and loader, are included in the NASM distribution.

Until version 0.90 of NASM was released in October 1996, NASM only supported output of flat-format executable files (e.g. MS-DOS COM files). In version 0.90, Simon Tatham added support for an object-file output interface, along with support for DOS .OBJ files for 16-bit code only.[8]

NASM thus lacked a 32-bit object format. To address this lack, and as an exercise to learn the object-file interface, developer Julian Hall put together the first version of RDOFF, which was released in NASM version 0.91.[8]

Since this initial version, there has been one major update to the RDOFF format, which added a record-length indicator on each header record,[9] allowing programs to skip over records whose format they do not recognise, and support for multiple segments; RDOFF1 only supported three segments: text, data and bss (containing uninitialized data).[7]

See also


  1. ^ Ram Narayan. "Linux assemblers: A comparison of GAS and NASM". two of the most popular assemblers for Linux, GNU Assembler (GAS) and Netwide Assembler (NASM) 
  2. ^ a b "The Netwide Assembler". Retrieved 2008-06-27. 
  3. ^ "NASM Version History". Retrieved 2009-07-19. 
  5. ^  
  6. ^ "NASM Doc Search Engine". Retrieved 2009-09-14. 
  7. ^ a b "NASM Manual Ch. 6". Retrieved 2008-06-27. 
  8. ^ a b "NASM CVS". 2008-06-08. Retrieved 2008-06-27. 
  9. ^ "V1-V2.txt". 2002-12-04. Retrieved 2008-06-27. 

Further reading


External links

