Freedom of assembly

Assembly language is closer to what a computer understands and less like what a human would understand. but it is fast and compact. when assembled and linked vs a compiled higher level program. Assembly language version of Hello world:

section .data
 hello:     db 'Hello world!',10    ; 'Hello world!' plus a linefeed character
 helloLen:  equ $-hello             ; Length of the 'Hello world!' string
                                    ; (I'll explain soon)
section .text
 global _start
_start:
 mov eax,4            ; The system call for write (sys_write)
 mov ebx,1            ; File descriptor 1 - standard output
 mov ecx,hello        ; Put the offset of hello in ecx
 mov edx,helloLen     ; helloLen is a constant, so we don't need to say
                      ;  mov edx,[helloLen] to get it's actual value
 int 80h              ; Call the kernel
 mov eax,1            ; The system call for exit (sys_exit)
 mov ebx,0            ; Exit with return code of 0 (no error)
 int 80h

or

No real lesson here except to expose you to how it looks. To make it a program where the preceding code was saved as hw.asm, you would:

$ nasm -f elf hw.asm
$ ld -s -o hw hw.o
$ ./hw
Hello world!

~$ ls -alh hw
-rwxrwxr-x 1 eddie eddie 360 Sep 19 02:09 hw

The same program in the C language without comments that would really make it a larger program of source code.

#include <stdio.h>
main()
{
          printf ("Hello world!\n");
}

Save file as “hello.c”. To make this program, you would:

$ gcc hw.c -o hw
$ ./hw
Hello world!

$ ls -alh hw
-rwxrwxr-x 1 eddie eddie 7.0K Sep 19 02:12 hw


The hw.c file creates a program file of 8298 ot less bytes. the hw.asm file creates a program file of 440 or less bytes. You can see that though the assembly program is a bit longer it generates a much smaller file. So assembly programs being all things are equal could save you up to ninety or more percent disk space. If you are renting storage, this could be a real money saver. Also the increase of speed in your system saves time and money also in other ways.

————————————————————————
Other examples of hello world:

Cobol (open-cobol using free form) Known for being wordy, but it is also self documenting.

IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
PROGRAM-ID. hello.
PROCEDURE DIVISION.
 DISPLAY "Hello World!".
STOP RUN.

Save file as “hello.cob”. To make this program, you would:

$ cobc -O -x -free hello.cob
$ ./hello
Hello, world!

or more primitive form (do not forget to skip seven spaces)

     * Sample COBOL program
      IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
      PROGRAM-ID. hello.
      PROCEDURE DIVISION.
      DISPLAY "Hello World!".
      STOP RUN. 

The compiler is cobc, which is executed as follows:

$ cobc -O -x hw.cob
$ ./hello
Hello World!

Basic (freebasic)

'rem start 

print"Hello world!"
end

Save file as “hello.bas”. To make this program, you would:

$ fbc -lang qb hw.bas
$ ./hw
Hello world!

Pascal (free pascal)

program Hello_World;
Begin
                writeln('Hello World!')
End.

Save file as “hw.pas”. To make this program, you would: (ignore error)

$ fpc hw.pas
Free Pascal Compiler version 2.4.4-3.1 [2012/01/04] for i386
Copyright (c) 1993-2010 by Florian Klaempfl
Target OS: Linux for i386
Compiling hw.pas
Linking hw
/usr/bin/ld: warning: link.res contains output sections; did you forget -T?
4 lines compiled, 0.2 sec
$ ./hw
Hello World!



C++ (g++) New age version of C?

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
//hello.cpp
int main()
{
  cout << "Hello world!\n";
  return 0;
}

Save file as “hello.cpp”. To make this program, you would:

$ g++ hw.cpp -o hw
$ ./hw
Hello world!
 

Java (javac java)
 

public class HelloWorld {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        System.out.println("Hello, World");
    }
}

Save file as “HelloWorld.java”. To make this program, you would:

$ javac HelloWorld.java
$ java HelloWorld
Hello, World

Python (interpreted)

print "Hello World!"
exit()

$ python
Python 2.6.5 (r265:79063, Apr 16 2010, 13:09:56)
[GCC 4.4.3] on linux2
Type “help”, “copyright”, “credits” or “license” for more information.
>>> print “Hello World!”
Hello World!
>>> exit()

or

#!/usr/bin/python
# start
 print “Hello World!”;
# end

Save file as “hw.py”. To make this program, you would:

$ python hw.py
Hello World!

Bash (interpreted)

$ printf "Hello world! \n";

$ echo Hello world!

Fortran (gfortran (do not forget to start at column 6))

      program helloworld
         print *,"Hello World!"
      end program helloworld

Save file as “hw.for”. To make this program, you would:

$ gfortran hw.for
$ ./hw
Hello world!

Anyway, just some examples of “Hello world!” code to wet your appetite for programming.  Notice any similarities/differences in all this. All the examples worked “as is” on linux with free software.