I'm trying to learn MacOS assembly using NASM and I can't get a trivial program to work. I'm trying a variation of the "Hello, World" where the two words are independently called by a macro. My source code looks like this:
%macro printString 2
mov rax, 0x2000004 ; write
mov rdi, 1 ; stdout
mov rsi, %1
mov rdx, %2
syscall
%endmacro
global start
section .text
start:
printString str1,str1.len
printString str2,str2.len
mov rax, 0x2000001 ; exit
mov rdi, 0
syscall
section .data
str1: db "Hello,",10,
.len: equ $ - str1
str2: db "world",10
.len: equ $ - str2
The expected result should be:
$./hw
Hello,
World
$
Instead I get:
$./hw
Hello,
$
What am I missing? How do I fix it?
EDIT: I am compiling & running with the following commands:
/usr/local/bin/nasm -f macho64 hw.asm
ld -macosx_version_min 10.7.0 -lSystem -o hw hw.o
./hw
NASM 2.11.08 and 2.13.02+ have bugs with macho64
output. What you are observing seems to be something I saw specifically with 2.13.02+ recently when using absolute references. The final linked program has incorrect fixups applied so the reference to str2
is incorrect. The incorrect fixup causes us to print out memory that isn't str2
.
NASM has a bug report about this issue in their system. I have added a specific example of this failure based on the code in the question. Hopefully the NASM developers will be able to reproduce the failure and create a fix.
Update: As of June 2018 my view is that there are enough recurring bugs and regressions in NASM that I do not recommend NASM at this point in time for Macho-64 development.
Another recommendation I have for Macho-64 development is to use RIP relative addressing rather than absolute. RIP relative addressing is the default for 64-bit programs on later versions of MacOS.
In NASM you can use the default rel
directive in your file to change the default from absolute to RIP relative addresses. For this to work you will have to change from using mov register, variable
to lea register, [variable]
when trying to move the address of a variable to a register. Your revised code could look like:
default rel
%macro printString 2
mov rax, 0x2000004 ; write
mov rdi, 1 ; stdout
lea rsi, [%1]
mov rdx, %2
syscall
%endmacro
global start
section .text
start:
printString str1,str1.len
printString str2,str2.len
mov rax, 0x2000001 ; exit
mov rdi, 0
syscall
section .data
str1: db "Hello,",10
.len: equ $ - str1
str2: db "world",10
.len: equ $ - str2