Re: PATCH - assembler glitches

Linus Torvalds (torvalds@transmeta.com)
Tue, 12 Oct 1999 17:06:16 -0700 (PDT)


On Tue, 12 Oct 1999, Martin Dalecki wrote:
>
> The attached patch is sweepping out obvious errors in IA32 assembler
> code.

It's not "obvious errors", as it's actually "non-obvious features". The

movl %ax,%ds

thing actually used to generate the right (32-bit) move on gas, and

movw %ax,%ds

used to generate the WRONG (16-bit) move on gas.

The reason the 32-bit move is the right one is that both the 32-bit and
the 16-bit moves actually do the same thing (the target register is a
16-bit register after all), but the 32-bit move does so in smaller space
and faster due to the lack of a size override.

I'd like somebody to sacrifice their first-borne son, and write in blood
that gas does the right thing every time these days. Otherwise I will keep
the thing that looks strange but has a real explanation for it.

Linus

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