CSAPP

I have started this book somewhere around June 2024. It is thick, and it is full of information and homework.

I am trying to not be too ambitious so I will not commit to reading the whole book, though it wouldn't be a tragedy if I end up doing so. The chapters that I have chosen to read are already plenty to go through, and they have been selected based on where I believe most of my knowledge gaps are:

Chapter 3: Machine-Level Representation of Programs
Chapter 4: Processor Architecture
Chapter 5: Optimising Program Performance
Chapter 7: Linking
Chapter 9: Virtual Memory

I'll also skim through the following chapters, but likely not going to dive too deep:

Chapter 6: The Memory Hierarchy
Chapter 8: Exceptional Control Flow

Tools

For assembly code, I much prefer Intel syntax over AT&T. It is annoying that gcc and objdump defaults use AT&T, so we need to set the appropriate flags in many commands below.

Compiling and running `.c` binaries

gcc -Og /tmp/main.c -o /tmp/a.o && /tmp/a.o

Compiling `.c` to `.asm`

gcc -S -masm=intel -fno-asynchronous-unwind-tables <options> -o /tmp/main.asm

I've translated the above to a vim command "CToAssembly" for convenience.

Showing the compiled bytes for function

gdb /tmp/a.o
# Display the first 14 hex of the function my_sweet_function.
# However note that using a disassembler is best! See section below.
(gdb) x/14xb my_sweet_function

Disassembling

objdump -d --disassembler-options=intel /tmp/a.o

Analogously, I've translated the above to a vim command "Disassembler" for convenience.

Pertinent notes

Calling convention between C and assembly for function calls. The order of arguments is: