Question

This is, hopefully, a simple question:

First, I would like to know if anyone has an idea of how to get user input using x86 NASM Syntax Assembly on Linux. Right now, I have:

section .data
    greet:       db 'Hello!', 0Ah, 'What is your name?', 0Ah  ;simple greeting
    greetL:      equ $-greet                                  ;greet length
    colorQ:      db 'What is your favorite color?'            ;color question
    colorL:      equ $-colorQ                                 ;colorQ length
    suprise1:    db 'No way '                               
    suprise1L    equ $-suprise1
    suprise3:    db ' is my favorite color, too!', 0Ah

section .bss 
    name:        resb 20                                      ;user's name
    color:       resb 15                                      ;user's color

section .text
    global _start
_start:

    greeting:
         mov eax, 4
         mov ebx, 1
         mov ecx, greet
         mov edx, greetL
         int 80                                               ;print greet

    getname:
         mov eax, 3
         mov ebx, 0
         mov ecx, name
         mov edx, 20
         int 80                                               ;get name

    askcolor:
         ;asks the user's favorite color using colorQ

    getcolor: 
         mov eax, 3
         mov ebx, 0
         mov ecx, name
         mov edx, 20
         int 80

    thesuprise:
         mov eax, 4
         mov ebx, 1
         mov ecx, suprise1
         mov edx, suprise1L
         int 80 

         mov eax, 4
         mov ebx, 1
         mov ecx, name
         mov edx, 20
         int 80 

         ;write the color

         ;write the "suprise" 3

         mov eax, 1
         mov ebx, 0
         int 80

So what it does is ask for a name and color, and say, “No way –name– –color– is my favorite color, too.

What I need help on is how to find how long the “name” and “color” variables above are after the user enters them. Otherwise, I get a bunch of long, nasty spaces in between because I only know that the max size they can be is what I declared before.

Thank you for any and all help.

Answer 1

The read system call returns the number of bytes read in the eax register. If this number is < 0, there was a read error of some sort.