Question

I was wondering if there’s some special way to compile high-level code (preferably from c/c++ or java) to get the corresponding assembly code.

Answer 1

gcc can dump an assembly listing using -S switch – it will emit the assembly code to a file with a .s extension. For example, the following command:

gcc -O2 -S -c foo.c

will leave the generated assembly code on the file foo.s.

If you want to see the C code together with the assembly it was converted to, use a command line like this:

gcc -c -g -Wa,-a,-ad [other GCC options] foo.c > foo.lst

which will output the combined C/assembly listing to the file foo.lst.

Most compilers will support something similar to aid debugging the compiler itself. For Visual C++, see this guide.