Question

Is there really no way to print an ascii string in assembly to standard output without using up all four general purpose registers?

Answer 1

Right, it takes three registers for the parameters plus one for the system call number…

But, x86 has pusha and popa, which will push and pop all the registers in one instruction.

$ cat hwa.S
write = 0x04
exit  = 0xfc
.text
_start:
        pusha
        movl    $1, %ebx
        lea     str, %ecx
        movl    $len, %edx
        movl    $write, %eax
        int     $0x80
        popa
        xorl    %ebx, %ebx
        movl    $exit, %eax
        int     $0x80
.data
str:    .ascii "Hello, world!\n"
len = . -str
.globl  _start
$ as -o hwa.o hwa.S
$ ld hwa.o
$ ./a.out
Hello, world!