Question

I am using a toolkit to do some Elliptical Curve Cryptography on an ATMega2560. When trying to use the print functions in the toolkit I am getting an empty string. I know the print functions work because the x86 version prints the variables without a problem. I am not experienced with ATMega and would love any help on this matter. The print code is included below.

Code to print a big number (it itself calls a util_print)

void bn_print(bn_t a) {
int i;

if (a->sign == BN_NEG) {
    util_print("-");
}
if (a->used == 0) {
    util_print("0\n");
} else {
#if WORD == 64
    util_print("%lX", (unsigned long int)a->dp[a->used - 1]);
    for (i = a->used - 2; i >= 0; i--) {
        util_print("%.*lX", (int)(2 * (BN_DIGIT / 8)),
                (unsigned long int)a->dp[i]);
    }
#else
    util_print("%llX", (unsigned long long int)a->dp[a->used - 1]);
    for (i = a->used - 2; i >= 0; i--) {
        util_print("%.*llX", (int)(2 * (BN_DIGIT / 8)),
                (unsigned long long int)a->dp[i]);
    }
#endif
    util_print("\n");
}
}

The code to actually print a big number variable:

static char buffer[64 + 1];
void util_printf(char *format, ...) {
#ifndef QUIET
#if ARCH == AVR
char *pointer = &buffer[1];
va_list list;
va_start(list, format);
vsnprintf(pointer, 128, format, list);
buffer[0] = (unsigned char)2;
va_end(list);
#elif ARCH == MSP
va_list list;
va_start(list, format);
vprintf(format, list);
va_end(list);
#else
va_list list;
va_start(list, format);
vprintf(format, list);
fflush(stdout);
va_end(list);
#endif
#endif
}

edit: I do have UART initialized and can output printf statments to a console.

Answer 1

Alright so I found a workaround to print the bn numbers to a stdout on an ATMega2560. The toolkit comes with a function that writes a variable to a string (bn_write_str). So I implemented my own print function as such:

void print_bn(bn_t a)
{
    char print[BN_SIZE]; // max precision of a bn number
    int bi = bn_bits(a); // get the number of bits of the number
    bn_write_str(print, bi, a, 16) // 16 indicates the radix (hexadecimal)
    printf("%s\n"), print);
}

This function will print a bn number in hexadecimal format.
Hope this helps anyone using the RELIC toolkit with an AVR.

This skips the util_print calls.