Re: 1-pass Assembler Design

Jack W. Crenshaw <jcrens@magicnet.net> wrote:
>Steve's solution was not to backpatch at all, but to write files that
>had relocation info (and other commands) into the binary files. I
>don't know all the details (many of which are proprietary), but I
>pieced together enough clues to figure out the general idea. His
>linker (which also shared pieces with the assembler) was a classic
>abstract machine, complete with stack arithmetic, reverse Polish
>notation, etc. This made it capable of doing any kind of address
>arithmetic at link time. It also could, of course, do all the usual
>resolution of external references, etc., which meant that it
>maintained a symbol table.


Anyone who finds this description appealing will enjoy the following
paper, which describes a linker along these lines.


      Fraser, Christopher W. and David R. Hanson. 1982 (April). A
      machine-independent linker. Software---Practice & Experience
      12(4):351--366.
[An excellent paper. Be sure to get the errata sheet that goes with it.
-John]
--

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