CODEWITHSUNDEEP
cgccassemblycompilationx86
staroselskii
staroselskii

Reputation: 365

Why does GCC produce the following asm output?

I don't understand why gcc -S -m32 produces these particular lines of code:

movl    %eax, 28(%esp)
movl    $desc, 4(%esp)
movl    28(%esp), %eax
movl    %eax, (%esp)
call    sort_gen_asm

My question is why %eax is pushed and then popped? And why movl used instead of pushl and popl respectively? Is it faster? Is there some coding convention I don't yet know? I've just started looking at asm-output closely, so I don't know much.

The C code:

void print_array(int *data, size_t sz);
void sort_gen_asm(array_t*, comparer_t);

int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
    FILE *file;
    array_t *array;

    file = fopen("test", "rb");
    if (file == NULL) { 
        err(EXIT_FAILURE, NULL);
    }   

    array = array_get(file);
    sort_gen_asm(array, desc); 
    print_array(array->data, array->sz);

    array_destroy(array);
    fclose(file); 

    return 0;
}

It gives this output:

    .file   "main.c"
    .section    .rodata
.LC0:
    .string "rb"
.LC1:
    .string "test"
    .text
    .globl  main
    .type   main, @function
main:
.LFB2:
    .cfi_startproc
    pushl   %ebp
    .cfi_def_cfa_offset 8
    .cfi_offset 5, -8
    movl    %esp, %ebp
    .cfi_def_cfa_register 5
    andl    $-16, %esp
    subl    $32, %esp
    movl    $.LC0, 4(%esp)
    movl    $.LC1, (%esp)
    call    fopen
    movl    %eax, 24(%esp)
    cmpl    $0, 24(%esp)
    jne .L2
    movl    $0, 4(%esp)
    movl    $1, (%esp)
    call    err
.L2:
    movl    24(%esp), %eax
    movl    %eax, (%esp)
    call    array_get
    movl    %eax, 28(%esp)
    movl    $desc, 4(%esp)
    movl    28(%esp), %eax
    movl    %eax, (%esp)
    call    sort_gen_asm
    movl    28(%esp), %eax
    movl    4(%eax), %edx
    movl    28(%esp), %eax
    movl    (%eax), %eax
    movl    %edx, 4(%esp)
    movl    %eax, (%esp)
    call    print_array
    movl    28(%esp), %eax
    movl    %eax, (%esp)
    call    array_destroy
    movl    24(%esp), %eax
    movl    %eax, (%esp)
    call    fclose
    movl    $0, %eax
    leave
    .cfi_restore 5
    .cfi_def_cfa 4, 4
    ret
    .cfi_endproc
.LFE2:
    .size   main, .-main
    .ident  "GCC: (Ubuntu/Linaro 4.8.1-10ubuntu8) 4.8.1"
    .section    .note.GNU-stack,"",@progbits

Upvotes: 2

Views: 535

Answers (2)

rodrigo
rodrigo

Reputation: 98526

The save / load of eax is because you did not compile with optimizations. So any read/write of a variable will emit a read/write of a memory address.

Actually, for (almost) any line of code you will be able to identify the exact piece of assembler code resulting from it (let me advise you to compile with gcc -g -c -O0 and then objdump -S file.o):

#array = array_get(file); 
call array_get
movl    %eax, 28(%esp) #write array

#sort_gen_asm(array, desc); 
movl    28(%esp), %eax  #read array
movl    %eax, (%esp)
...

About not pushing/poping, it is a standard zero-cost optimization. Instead of push/pop every time you want to call a function you just substract the maximum needed space to esp at the beginning of the function and then save your function arguments at the bottom of the empty space. There are a lot of advantages: faster code (no changing esp), it doesn't need to compute the argument in any particular order, and the esp will need to be substracted anyway for the local variables space.

Upvotes: 5

Sergey L.
Sergey L.

Reputation: 22562

Some things have to do with calling conventions. Others with optimisations.

sort_gen_asm seems to use cdecl calling convention which requires it's arguments to be pushed onto the stack in reverse order. thus:

movl    $desc, 4(%esp)
movl    %eax, (%esp)

The other moves are partially unoptimised compiler routines:

movl    %eax, 28(%esp) # save contents of %eax on the stack before calling
movl    28(%esp), %eax # retrieve saved 28(%esp) in order to prepare it as an argument
                       # Unoptimised compiler seems to have forgotten that it's
                       # still in the register

Upvotes: 4

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