I have the following C function:
int sum_arr(int b[], int size){
int counter = size-1;
int res = 0;
while(counter >= 0){
res = res + b[counter];
counter = counter - 1;
}
return res;
}
From which I generated the following assembly code using:
gcc -Og -S file.c
Out came the following assembly code (I have included the parts of interest only):
sum_arr:
.LFB41:
.cfi_startproc
subl $1, %esi
movl $0, %eax
jmp .L2
.L3:
movslq %esi, %rdx
addl (%rdi,%rdx,4), %eax
subl $1, %esi
.L2:
testl %esi, %esi
jns .L3
rep ret
.cfi_endproc
I am having some trouble with .L3. The way I understand it is that it starts off by moving the int counter from a 32 bit register %esi into a 64 bit register %rdx. Then I don't understand the following line:
addl (%rdi,%rdx,4), %eax
in particluar the (%rdi,%rdx,4) part, which gets added to the value in the %eax register.
And on the last line it decrements the counter with 1.
Could someone help me out with that part?
.L3:
movslq %esi, %rdx /* sign extend counter<%esi> to 64bit %rdx */
addl (%rdi,%rdx,4), %eax /* res<%eax> += b<%rdi>[counter<%rdx>]; */
subl $1, %esi /* counter<%esi> -= 1 */
.L2:
testl %esi, %esi /* do counter<%esi> & counter<%esi> */
jns .L3 /* if result is no 0, jump to L3 */
Basically addl (%rdi,%rdx,4), %eax is where you access the array (%rdi) with the index of counter (%rdx) and add the value of the element to res (%eax), the 4 is just the multiply of counter (%rdx) for the memory access as each address in the int array consume 4 bytes in memory in your system.
The line basically says res += MEMORY[addrssOf(b) + counter*4]
BTW, I believe you want to check that size > 0 before line int counter = size-1;, and also as P__J__ mentioned in his answer, your res can overflow as it have the same type of each element in the array you summing.