The Art of Assembly Language, 2nd Edition

5.18 Procedure Pointers

The 80x86 call instruction allows three basic forms: direct calls (via a procedure name), indirect calls through a 32-bit general-purpose register, and indirect calls through a double-word pointer variable. The call instruction supports the following (low-level) syntax:

call Procname;     // Direct call to procedure Procname (or Stmt label).
call( Reg32 );     // Indirect call to procedure whose address appears
                   // in the Reg32 general-purpose 32-bit register.
call( dwordVar );  // Indirect call to the procedure whose address
                   // appears in the dwordVar double word variable.

The first form we've been using throughout this chapter, so there is little need to discuss it here. The second form, the register indirect call, calls the procedure ...