ARM Assembly Language, 2nd Edition

Chapter 18

Mixing C and Assembly

18.1 Introduction

In this last chapter, we’re going to examine a few instances where it may make sense to combine your high-level C or C++ code with assembly. Mixing C and assembly is quite common, especially in deeply embedded applications where programmers work nearly at the hardware level. Doing such a thing is not always trivial, and the programmer is forced to be very mindful of variables, pointers, and function arguments. However, a good programmer will need certain tricks in his or her toolbox, and a point was made in the Preface that optimizing code usually requires the ability to recognize what the compiler is doing, and more importantly, the ability to modify code so that a compiler or an assembler ...