Sign Extending Unsigned Numbers

Just playing about really, but I thought it would be worth re-affirming in my brain that you have to be careful using assembler instructions like CLW, CLQ etc. when dealing with unsigned numbers since they propagate the sign bit.:

    #include <stdio.h>
    void extend(unsigned char x)
    {
        int y;
        asm ("xor %%eax, %%eax;\n\t"      /* clear EAX */
             "movb %1, %%al;\n\t"         /* move the byte x into AL */
             "cbw;\n\t"
             "movl %%eax, %0;\n\t"
             :"=r"(y)                     /* output only */
             :"r"(x)                      /* input */
             :"%eax");                    /* clobbered regs */

        printf("x=%d, cbw extended=%d\n", x, y);
    }

    int main(void)
    {
        extend(127);
        extend(128);

        return 0;
    }

gives

    ~/c/tmp> ./a.out
    x=127, cbw extended=127
    x=128, cbw extended=65408

there is no binary flag for printf in C, but in Common Lisp:

    CL-USER> (format t "~20B~%" 128)
                10000000
    NIL
    CL-USER> (format t "~20B~%" 65408)
        1111111110000000
    NIL

Instead of doing it in inline C, I thought I’d try nasm + gcc

            extern  printf

            SECTION .data
    fmt:    db "cbw %d (previously %d)", 10, 0 

            SECTION .text
            global main        ; needed for gcc 
    main:
            push    ebp
            mov     ebp,esp

            xor     eax,eax
            mov     ax, 128
            push    eax
            cbw
            push    eax
            push    dword fmt
            call    printf

            add     esp, 12    ; pop 3 pushes
            mov     esp, ebp   ; clean stack frame
            pop     ebp
            mov     eax,0      ; no error return
            ret

building and running with

    ~/c/tmp> nasm -f elf nasm2.asm
    ~/c/tmp> gcc -o nasm2 nasm2.o
    ~/c/tmp> nasm2
    cbw 65408 (previously 128)