I'm to convert the following AT&T x86 assembly into C:
movl 8(%ebp), %edx
movl $0, %eax
movl $0, %ecx
jmp .L2
.L1
shll $1, %eax
movl %edx, %ebx
andl $1, %ebx
orl %ebx, %eax
shrl $1, %edx
addl $1, %ecx
.L2
cmpl $32, %ecx
jl .L1
leave
But must adhere to the following skeleton code:
int f(unsigned int x) {
int val = 0, i = 0;
while(________) {
val = ________________;
x = ________________;
i++;
}
return val;
}
I can tell that the snippet
.L2
cmpl $32, %ecx
jl .L1
can be interpreted as while(i<32)
. I also know that x
is stored in %edx
, val
in %eax
, and i
in %ecx
. However, I'm having a hard time converting the assembly within the while
/.L1
loop into condensed high-level language that fits into the provided skeleton code. For example, can shll
, shrl
, orl
, and andl
simply be written using their direct C equivalents (<<
,>>
,|
,&
), or is there some more nuance to it?
Is there a standardized guide/"cheat sheet" for Assembly-to-C conversions?
I understand assembly to high-level conversion is not always clear-cut, but there are certainly patterns in assembly code that can be consistently interpreted as certain C operations.
while (i < 32) { val = (val << 1) | (x & 1); x = x >> 1; i++; }
except val and the return value should be unsigned and they aren't in your template. The function returns the bits in x reversed.
The actual answer to your question is more complicated and is pretty much: no there is no such guide and it can't exist because compilation loses information and you can't recreate that lost information from assembler. But you can often make a good educated guess.