Art of Assembly Language, 1st Edition

12.1. 12.1 Chapter Overview

A string is a collection of values stored in contiguous memory locations. Strings are usually arrays of bytes, words, or (on 80386 and later processors) double words. The 80×86 microprocessor family supports several instructions specifically designed to cope with strings. This chapter explores some of the uses of these string instructions. The 80×86 CPUs can process three types of strings: byte strings, word strings, and double word strings. They can move strings, compare strings, search for a specific value within a string, initialize a string to a fixed value, and do other primitive operations on strings. The 80×86's string instructions are also useful for manipulating arrays, tables, and records. You can easily assign ...