Question

I wrote the following assembly function callable from C to count the length of a null-terminated string. But for some reason, the count is always off by +1. I can’t figure out why. Any clue?

Thanks!!!

 1  .text
 2  .globl _len
 3  _len:
 4          pushl %ebp              # set up stack frame
 5          movl %esp, %ebp         # save esp in ebp
 6          movl 8(%ebp), %ecx      # the beg of string
 7          xor %eax, %eax          # init length to 0
 8          
 9  start:
10          xor %edx, %edx          # char at this index
11          movb (%ecx), %dl        # 
12          inc %eax
13          inc %ecx
14  
15          cmpb $0x0,  %dl
16          jne start
17  end:
18  
19          movl %ebp, %esp         # restore esp
20          popl %ebp               # restore ebp
21          ret
22          .end
23 

Answer 1

You are counting the terminating zero char. Either start with -1 or increment after the comparison.