Restored from previous forum. Originally posted by Danilo.
Franco,
NASM is nearly dead for a long time. Sometimes
some guys continue working on it and after a while
its getting silent...
NASM was always known as being very bad at optimizations,
especially JUMPs.
Anyway... many ppl used NASM because of its clean syntax.
The Author of FASM wrote it because he was not satisfied
with the development of NASM.
That said, FASM is nearly 100% compatible with NASM, syntax-wise.
MACROs for example are different, but much more powerful.
FASM is a LowLevel Assembler. LowLevel.. that is what
using Assembly Language is all about.
With FASM you have _FULL_ control over all your code and
nothing is hidden (like in MASM that is more like C).
You can control all sections of the executable directly
with ASM-Source. Resources, Imports, Exports... all can
be controled directly in the source by using MACROs.
If you write plain ASM, you even dont need a linker.
Another thing is the speed difference.
FASM is written 100% in ASM (comes with source) and is
much faster than NASM, even with all the optimizations.
A bigger project compiles in 5 seconds with NASM,
where it takes only 3 seconds with FASM.
Take a look at the FASM site, get all stuff there
and _read the manual and examples carefully_:
http://fasm.sourceforge.net/
There is also a small Editor available for FASM..
..completely written in FASM itself.
For library-development you can still use NASM
if this is your question.
cya,
...Danilo
(registered PureBasic user)
