ppasm

Are you tired of executing your C compiler on your source code to get your binaries? With ppasm's fully-preprocessor x86_64 assembler, you can skip the compiler and move straight to the action!

Let's take a look at some of ppasm's killer features:

ppasm	literally any C compiler
4 phases of compilation, super speedy!	8 phases of compilation, slow and boring...
No types at all, maximum productivity!	Static type system, kills prototyping speed...
Full-blown functional language for macros!	Crappy old macro system, a complete pain...
Unlimited flexibility, anything is possible!	Restricted semantics, C standard controls you...

Table of Contents

• Overview
• Tutorial

Overview

TODO: Comparison with NASM syntax

Tutorial

Let's take a simple example of a factorial. As a C program, this might look like:

unsigned int fac(unsigned int n) {
	unsigned int acc = n;
	while (--n) acc *= n;
	return acc;
}

and in NASM assembly, this might be represented as:

fac:
	mov eax, edi
	mov edx, edi
	sub edx, 1
	je .end
loop:
	imul eax, edx
	sub edx, 1
	jne .loop
	ret
end:
	mov eax, 1
	ret

But compiling that would take significant effort! One would have to invoke the entire C compiler (a heavyweight tool!) to produce a binary from the first snippet, and one would need to get a third-party assembler to do anything useful with the second. Not so with ppasm:

#include <ppasm/ppasm.h>

assemble (
	mov (eax, edi),
	mov (edx, edi),
	sub (edx, 1),
	je (8R),

	label (8L, imul (eax, edx)),
	sub (edx, 1),
	jne (8L),

	label (8R, mov (eax, 1)),
	ret
)

By simply running this through your C preprocessor, the program will be compiled into a string containing the raw-escaped bytes of the assembled instructions! To get the final binary file, all one needs to do is run printf "%b" on the output and redirect the resulting binary stream into your file of choice!