Question

I’ve got an application written in pure C, mixed with some functions that contain pure ASM. Naked attribute isn’t available for x86 (why? why?!) and my asm functions don’t like when prologue and epilogue is messing with the stack. Is it somehow possible to create a pure assembler function that can be referenced from C code parts? I simply need the address of such ASM function.

Answer 1

Just use asm() outside a function block. The argument of asm() is simply ignored by the compiler and passed directly on to the assembler. For complex functions a separate assembly source file is the better option to avoid the awkward syntax.

Example:

#include <stdio.h>

asm("_one:              \n\
        movl $1,%eax    \n\
        ret             \n\
");

int one();

int main() {
        printf("result: %d\n", one());
        return 0;
}

PS: Make sure you understand the calling conventions of your platform. Many times you can not just copy/past assembly code.

PPS: If you care about performance, use extended asm instead. Extended asm essentially inlines the assembly code into your C/C++ code and is much faster, especially for short assembly functions. For larger assembly functions a seperate assembly source file is preferable, so this answer is really a hack for the rare case that you need a function pointer to a small assembly function.