Assembler is a software that converts assembly language code into machine code. Assembler is very useful to learn assembly language and understand its working process.
Assembler List
| NAME | developer | Operating System | Free & open-source | License |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NASM | Simon Tatham, Julian Hall, Hans Peter Anvin, et | Linux, macOS, Windows, DOS, OS/2 | Yes | BSD |
| GAS(GNU) | GNU Project | Unix, Windows, DOS, OS/2 | Yes | GNU GPL |
| FASM | Tomasz Grysztar | Windows, DOS, Linux, Unix-like | Yes | BSD with added Copyleft |
| MASM | Microsoft | Windows, DOS, OS/2 | No | Microsoft EULA |
| TASM | Borland | Windows, DOS | No | Proprietary |
Popular assembler for assembly language
NASM Assembler - The Netwide Assembler (NASM) is free cross-platform software released under the BSD license.. Operating system Unix-like, Windows, OS/2, MS-DOS
The first version of NASM was released in October 1996. It was originally written by Simon Tatham with assistance from Julian Hall. Since 2016 it is maintained by a small team led by H. Peter Enwin
Netwide Assembler ( NASM) is an assembler and disassembler for the Intel x86 architecture. It can be used to write 16-bit, 32-bit (IA-32) and 64-bit (x86-64) programs. It is considered one of the most popular assemblers for Linux.
Website - www.nasm.usGNU Assembler - ( GAS ) is free cross-platform software released under the GNU General Public License v3. This is the default back-end for GCC. GAS executable is named .as .
The first version of GAS was released in 1986–1987. It was written by Dean Elsner for the VAX architecture
Commonly known as GAS or AS, is assembler developed by the GNU Project. It is a part of the GNU binutils package. It is used to create the GNU operating system and the Linux kernel and many other software.
Website - www.gnu.org/software/binutils
FASM Assembler - flat assembler is free and open-source software released under the Simplified BSD with a weak copyleft clause license.
Operating system - Unix-like, Linux, Windows and IDE, MS-DOS and IDE, OpenBSD, etc., MenuetOS, KolibriOS, OctaOS, DexOS and IDE, SkyOS, Solar_OS
The first version of FASM was released in March 2000. It is an assembler for x86 processors. It was written by Tomasz Greitzer. It supports Intel-style assembly language on IA-32 and x86-64 computer architectures.
Website - flatassembler.net
MASM Assembler - Microsoft Macro Assembler is an x86 assembler released under the Commercial Proprietary Software License.
The first version of MASM was released in 1981. It was written by Microsoft, it uses Intel syntax for MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows. Starting with MASM 8.0, there are two versions of the assembler: one for 16-bit and 32-bit assembly sources, and another (ML64) for 64-bit sources only.
It is not sold as a separate product since version 6.12. Instead it is supplied with various Microsoft SDKs and C compilers. Recent versions of MASM have been included in Microsoft Visual Studio.
Website - docs.microsoft.com
Turbo Assembler - TASM - is software released under a Proprietary License. This is Turbo Pascal, Turbo Basic, Turbo C and Turbo C++. The Turbo Assembler package is bundled with the Turbo Linker and is interoperable with the Turbo Debugger. Operating system - MS-DOS, Windows
First version of Turbo Assembler 1989; was released in It was written by Borland, TASM itself is a 16-bit program. It will run on 16- and 32-bit versions of Windows, and will generate code for the same versions, but it does not generate 64-bit x86 code.
Website - https://web.archive.org
The list of these assemblers is very long and it is also very difficult to know them all because with the development of computer many processor architectures were developed and according to utility each processor architecture had its own instruction set. This led to the development of several assembly languages and assemblers. Some assemblers support only one assembly language and some support multiple languages.
Instead of learning different assemblers to learn assembly language, we need open source free assemblers to learn how to work with hardware and run code according to the basic instructions of assembly.
- One-pass assembler - These assemblers do the whole job of converting assembly code to machine code in one go
- Multi-pass/two-pass assembler These assemblers first process the assembly code and store the values in the opcode table and symbol table. And then in the second step, they generate machine code using these tables.
What is assembler? -Assembler is a software that converts assembly language code into machine code (binary language).
