Exercise #4

Convert the bitcount.c file to X86_64 assembly code. To do this I recommend copying the bitcount.c file as bitcount.s and begin converting the code line by line.

• It is not recommended that you use the syscall registers: rax, rdi, rsi, rdx, r10, r8 or r9 (or r11) for your main program except for system calls, use rbx or r12-r15. Preferably use memory for variable storage.

• The "command line parameters" to your assembly program are placed on the stack for you by the kernel. They are located immediately before where the stack register (rsp) points to. The first parameter is "argc", the value of which would be at [rsp]. argv is then "above" that location, each pointer is 8 bytes, thus argv[0] is at [rsp+8], argv[1] at [rsp+16], etc. If the value at [rsp+n*8] == 0, then you are at the end of the arguments list.

  To access the first character of argv[1], placing it in r15 would then require:

  mov r14, [rsp+16]     ; loads address of argv[1] into r14. Remember that
                        ; argv[1] is a pointer (i.e. an address) to the
                        ; string, it must still be de-referenced.
  mov r15, BYTE [r14]   ; Move the byte at the address in r14 into r15.

The file argv.s contain example code for accessing the arguments (and environment) in assembly and the file lib.s contains a number of assembly routines that argv.s uses and that you may find useful for completing this exercise.