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cnasmfpulong-double

Nasm: how to load a long double into the FPU from memory

I am writing a function in nasm that will be called from 32bit ansi C.

The function prototype in C looks like this: long double scalar(int n, long double *x) Where x is a pointer to an array of long doubles.

The problem occurs when I try to load a single long double to the FPU:

    mov ecx, [esp+8] ; n
    mov eax, [esp+12] ; *x
    fld [eax] ; ERROR: operation size not specified

How should I specify the size? My C compiler uses 12 bytes for a long double, how to fit it into the 80 bits?

Solution

  • To specify the size explicitely use the following form in NASM:

    fld TWORD [eax] ; load 10 bytes from [eax]

    As you pointed out, FPU stack registers are 80 bits wide. The C compiler chooses 12 bytes, because of the data alignment requirements of the stack frame.