How to Create Your Own Windows Programs

CHAPTER 6

HLA LANGUAGE CODE EXAMPLE.

The previous chapter introduced Assembly Language macros that can be used to create equivalents of higher level language statements.

This effectively results in the creation of new programming languages, which are referred to as HLA Languages ( 'High Level Assembly'). I use the plural because there can be many different HLA Languages, depending on the particular set of HLL type statements that might be created by a particular programmer, who can create macros to suit his own preferences, as desired. As a matter of interest and comparison, the following code is the same as the previous Assembly Language code example, that can be used for converting a binary number to character codes, or character codes to a binary number, but is written in the HLA Language I use if writing code.

I first briefly explain what all the HLA statements are, that are used in the code, and what they mean, and then present the code, to show how they can make the code shorter and easier to read than the original code in pure Assembly Language.

If you compare the length of the code here with the same in pure Assembly Language, in Chapter 4, you can see that the code here is about half the length of the pure Assembly Language version.

The HLA macros used are:

zero.d A,B,C…
means set A and B and C… etc. all to zero. The '.d' means A, B, C are dwords

until.d '>', A,B
means loop through the code, between until and end.until, until A is greater than B. until.d means A and B are dwords.

until.b '=', A,B
means loop through the code, between until and end.until, until A is equal to B. until.b means A and B are byte sized

until.b '==&', A,B, C,D…
means loop through the code, between until and end.until, until A=B and C=D… etc. until statements can be nested within one another

set.d '==&', A,B C,D…
means set A=B and C=D... etc.

set.b '=', A,B
means set A=B

inc.d A,B,C…
means increase dwords A, and B, and C… etc. by 1

call. Procedure, if.b, '=', A,B
means call the Procedure if A=B. if.b means A and B are byte sized (if.d, for example, would mean they were dwords).

________________

THE HLA CODE:

NUMBER_
.GetCharsFromNumber:
   jmp .start
.GetNumberFromChars:
   zero.d ebx,ecx,edx
   mov esi,NUMBER.Chars.in
until.d '>',ebx,3
   until.b '=',[esi+ebx],[NUMBER.Chars.Src+ecx]
      inc ecx
   end.until
      mov NUMBER.Numerical.Digits.in+ebx],cl
      inc ebx
      mov ecx,0
end.until
      mov [NUMBER.in],dword 0FFFFFFFFh
.start:
   set.d '==&',esi,NUMBER.Numerical.Digits.out, edi,NUMBER.Numerical.Digits.in
      zero.d ecx, [NUMBER.Out], [esi]
   until.b '==&',[esi],[edi], [esi+1],[edi+1], [esi+2],[edi+2], [esi+3],[edi+3]
   or.until.d '=',[NUMBER.Out],[NUMBER.in]
      inc.d [NUMBER.Out], [esi+3]
      call. .digit2, if.b, '=',[esi+3],10
end.until
   call. .get_output_chars, if.d, '=',[NUMBER.Out],[NUMBER.in]
   ret
.get_output_chars:
until.d '>',ebx,3
      mov cl,[esi+edx]
      set.b '=',[NUMBER.Chars.out+ebx],[NUMBER.Chars.Src+ecx]
      inc.d ebx, edx
      mov ecx,0
end.until
      ret
.digit2:
      mov [esi],byte 0
      inc byte [esi-1]
      call. .digit3, if.b, '=', [esi-1],10
      ret
digit3:
      mov [esi-1],byte 0
      inc byte [esi-2]
      call. .digit4, if.b, '=', [esi-2],10
      ret
.digit4:
      mov [esi-2],byte 0
      inc byte [esi-3]
      ret

Part I: Part I Introduction
Chapter 1: Binary numbers, code, and procedures
Chapter 3: Assembly Language
Chapter 4: Assembly Language Code example
Chapter 5: Macros and HLA
Chapter 6: HLA code example
Chapter 7: The Windows operating system
Chapter 8: Data Structures
Chapter 9: How to Create a Windows Program
Chapter 10: How to Create an Exe File
Chapter 11: Structured Programming and OOP
Part II: Part II Introduction
Chapter 12: Debugging a Windows Program Code
Chapter 13: Painting the Window Client Area
Chapter 14: Creating Window Menus
Chapter 15: How to Create Toolbars
Chapter 16: How to Create Popup Menus
Chapter 17: About the Windows Clipboard
Chapter 18: How to Create Bitmaps
Chapter 19: Icons and the Ico Format
Chapter 20: Common Dialog Boxes
Chapter 21: Working with Files
Chapter 22: Scrollbars and Scrolling
Chapter 23: How to Send Data to the Printer
Chapter 24: Miscellaneous Topics

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