What are arrays in assembly language?

An array is a data structure typically used to store a series of values. For example, an array may come in handy while storing the salaries of all the employees in a company.

Syntax

An assembly language directive is required to define the size of each element in the array. In the snippet below, we define an array whose each element is 2 bytes long and assign fib as its identifier. The DW directive stands for define word:

fib DW 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13

Yes, this is the Fibonacci series!

The times directive can be used to declare an array whose each element is identical. The length of the array must be pre-defined, as seen here:

null TIMES 10 0

The identifier for our array is null, and its size is 10. The above code is identical to this one:

null DW 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0

To access array elements, we obtain a pointer to the element that we wish to access. The following snippet of code demonstrates how to do this:

mov ecx, [esi];pointer to element at the 0th index stored in the register ecx
mov ecx, [esi+1];pointer to element at the 3rd index stored in the register ecx
mov ecx, [esi+2];pointer to element at the 2nd index stored in the register ecx

section	.text
   global _start  
	
_start:	
   		 
   mov  edi, arr	      ;fetches pointer to array
   mov  ecx, [edi]	   ;gets first element in array
   add  ecx, 48		   ;converts number in array to char
   push ecx		         ;pushes to stack as we require an address
   mov ecx, esp	 	   ;obtains the address of the number converted to char in ecx
   
   mov  edx, 1     	   ;message length, 1 byte
   mov  ebx, 1    	   ;file descriptor for stdout stream
   mov  eax, 4    	   ;system call number for the write system call
   int  0x80      	   ;call kernel
   mov  edi, arr        ;fetches pointer to array
   mov  ecx, [edi+1]    ;gets second element in array
   add  ecx, 48         ;converts number in array to char
   push ecx             ;pushes to stack as we require an address
   mov ecx, esp         ;obtains the address of the number converted to char in>
   mov  edx, 1          ;message length, 1 byte
   mov  ebx, 1          ;file descriptor for stdout stream
   mov  eax, 4          ;system call number for the write system call
   int  0x80            ;call kernel
   mov  edi, arr        ;fetches pointer to array
   mov  ecx, [edi+2]    ;gets third element in array
   add  ecx, 48         ;converts number in array to char
   push ecx             ;pushes to stack as we require an address
   mov ecx, esp         ;obtains the address of the number converted to char in>
   
   mov  edx, 1          ;message length, 1 byte
   mov  ebx, 1          ;file descriptor for stdout stream
   mov  eax, 4          ;system call number for the write system call
   int  0x80            ;call kernel
   mov  eax, 1    	   ;system call number of the exit system call
   int  0x80      	   ;calls kernel
section	.data
arr db 1,2,3
section .bss

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What are arrays in assembly language?

Syntax

Example