Programming Praxis

In this exercise and the next one we will write a simple assembler for a hypothetical computer; we are following the assembler in the book The Awk Programming Langauge by Alfred V. Aho, Brian W. Kernighan and Peter J. Weinberger. Our computer has a memory of a thousand five-digit words, a single accumulator, and eleven opcodes:

An assembly-language program is a series of blank lines and statements consisting of up to four fields: The first field, if it exists, is a label; it must start at the first position on the line and may not start with a digit. The second field, which is mandatory, is the opcode; it follows the optional label and mandatory spaces. The third field, which is used only with some opcodes, is the object; if it is present, it follows the opcode and mandatory spaces. The fourth field, which is optional, is a comment; everything on the line following a hash-sign is ignored. Here is a sample assembly-language program that prints the sum of a series of integers entered by the user, with the end of input marked by a 0:

# print sum of input numbers (terminated by zero)

     ld    zero   # initialize sum to zero
     st    sum
loop get          # read a number
     jz    done   # no more input if number is zero
     add   sum    # add input to accumulated sum
     st    sum    # store new value back in sum
     j     loop   # go back and read another number

done ld    sum    # print sum
     put
     halt

zero const 0
sum  const

The contents of memory after loading the sample program are shown on the next page.

Your task is to write a program that assembles a program written in our simple assembly language and loads the program into memory; we’ll write a simulator for our hypothetical computer in the next exercise. When you are finished, you are welcome to read or run a suggested solution, or to post your own solution or discuss the exercise in the comments below.

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