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
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