I started to learn Assembly lately and for practice, I thought of makeing a small game. To make the border graphic of the game I need to print a block character n times. To test this, I wrote the following code:
bits 64
global main
extern ExitProcess
extern GetStdHandle
extern WriteConsoleA
section .text
main:
mov rcx, -11
call GetStdHandle
mov rbx, rax
drawFrame:
mov r12, [sze]
l:
mov rcx, rbx
mov rdx, msg
mov r8, 1
sub rsp, 48
mov r9, [rsp+40]
mov qword [rsp+32], 0
call WriteConsoleA
dec r12
jnz l
xor rcx, rcx
call ExitProcess
section .data
score dd 0
sze dq 20
msg db 0xdb
I wanted to make this with the WinAPI Function for ouput. Interestingly, this code stops after printing one char when using WriteConsoleA, but when I use C's putchar, it works correctly. I could also manage to make a C equivalent with the WriteConsoleA function, which also works fine. The disassembly of the C code didn't bring me further.
I suspect there's something wrong in my use of the stack that I don't see. Hopefully someone can explain or point out.
You don't want to keep subtracting 48 from RSP through each loop. You only need to allocate that space once before the loop and before you call a C library function or the WinAPI.
The primary problem is with your 4th parameter in R9. The WriteConsole function is defined as:
BOOL WINAPI WriteConsole( _In_ HANDLE hConsoleOutput, _In_ const VOID *lpBuffer, _In_ DWORD nNumberOfCharsToWrite, _Out_opt_ LPDWORD lpNumberOfCharsWritten, _Reserved_ LPVOID lpReserved );
R9 is supposed to be a pointer to a memory location that returns a DWORD with the number of characters written, but you do:
mov r9, [rsp+40]
This moves the 8 bytes starting at memory address RSP+40 to R9. What you want is the address of [rsp+40] which can be done using the LEA instruction:
lea r9, [rsp+40]
Your code could have looked like:
bits 64
global main
extern ExitProcess
extern GetStdHandle
extern WriteConsoleA
section .text
main:
sub rsp, 56 ; Allocate space for local variable(s)
; Allocate 32 bytes of space for shadow store
; Maintain 16 byte stack alignment for WinAPI/C library calls
; 56+8=64 . 64 is evenly divisible by 16.
mov rcx, -11
call GetStdHandle
mov rbx, rax
drawFrame:
mov r12, [sze]
l:
mov rcx, rbx
mov rdx, msg
mov r8, 1
lea r9, [rsp+40]
mov qword [rsp+32], 0
call WriteConsoleA
dec r12
jnz l
xor rcx, rcx
call ExitProcess
section .data
score dd 0
sze dq 20
msg db 0xdb
Important Note: In order to be compliant with the 64-bit Microsoft ABI you must maintain the 16 byte alignment of the stack pointer prior to calling a WinAPI or C library function. Upon calling the main function the stack pointer (RSP) was 16 byte aligned. At the point the main function starts executing the stack is misaligned by 8 because the 8 byte return address was pushed on the stack. 48+8=56 doesn't get you back on a 16 byte aligned stack address (56 is not evenly divisible by 16) but 56+8=64 does. 64 is evenly divisible by 16.