Re: somebody dropped a (warning) bomb

Jan Engelhardt
2007-02-09T17:50:05Z

On Feb 9 2007 08:16, linux-os (Dick Johnson) wrote:
>On Fri, 9 Feb 2007, Jan Engelhardt wrote:
>> On Feb 8 2007 16:42, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>>>
>> Further, giving again answer to the question whether they generate
>> signed or unsigned comparisons: Have you ever seen a computer which
>> addresses memory with negative numbers? Since the answer is most likely
>> no, signed comparisons would
>
>Yes, most all do. Indexed memory operands are signed displacements. See
>page 2-16, Intel486 Microprocessor Programmer's Reference Manual. This

I was referring to "absolute memory", not the offset magic that assembler
allows. After all, (reg+relativeOffset) will yield an absolute address.
What I was out at: for machines that have more than 2 GB of memory, you
don't call the address that is given by 0x80000000U actually "byte
-2147483648", but "byte 2147483648".

>gets hidden by higher-level languages such as 'C'. It is also non-obvious
>when using the AT&T (GNU) assembly language. However, the Intel documentation
>shows it clearly:
> MOV AL, [EBX+0xFFFFFFFF] ; -1

It can be debated what exactly this is... negative offset or "using
overflow to get where we want".

Jan
--
ft: http://freshmeat.net/p/chaostables/