Features
NASM can output several binary formats including COFF, Portable Executable, a.out, ELF and Mach-O, though position-independent code is only supported for ELF object files. NASM also has its own binary format called RDOFF.
The variety of output formats allows programs to be retargeted to virtually any x86 operating system. In addition, NASM can create flat binary files, usable in writing boot loaders, ROM images, and in various facets of OS development. NASM can run on non-x86 platforms, such as SPARC and PowerPC, though it cannot generate programs usable by those machines.
NASM uses a variation of Intel assembly syntax instead of AT&T syntax. It also avoids features such as automatic generation of segment overrides (and the related ASSUME directive) used by MASM and compatible assemblers.
Read more about this topic: Netwide Assembler
Famous quotes containing the word features:
“Art is the child of Nature; yes,
Her darling child, in whom we trace
The features of the mother’s face,
Her aspect and her attitude.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)
““It looks as if
Some pallid thing had squashed its features flat
And its eyes shut with overeagerness
To see what people found so interesting
In one another, and had gone to sleep
Of its own stupid lack of understanding,
Or broken its white neck of mushroom stuff
Short off, and died against the windowpane.””
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“These, then, will be some of the features of democracy ... it will be, in all likelihood, an agreeable, lawless, particolored commonwealth, dealing with all alike on a footing of equality, whether they be really equal or not.”
—Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)