Become a leader in the IoT community!

New DevHeads get a 320-point leaderboard boost when joining the DevHeads IoT Integration Community. In addition to learning and advising, active community leaders are rewarded with community recognition and free tech stuff. Start your Legendary Collaboration now!

Step 1 of 5

CREATE YOUR PROFILE *Required

OR
Step 2 of 5

WHAT BRINGS YOU TO DEVHEADS? *Choose 1 or more

Collaboration & Work 🤝
Learn & Grow 📚
Contribute Experience & Expertise 🔧
Step 3 of 5

WHAT'S YOUR INTEREST OR EXPERTISE? *Choose 1 or more

Hardware & Design 💡
Embedded Software 💻
Edge Networking
Step 4 of 5

Personalize your profile

Step 5 of 5

Read & agree to our COMMUNITY RULES

  1. We want this server to be a welcoming space! Treat everyone with respect. Absolutely no harassment, witch hunting, sexism, racism, or hate speech will be tolerated.
  2. If you see something against the rules or something that makes you feel unsafe, let staff know by messaging @admin in the "support-tickets" tab in the Live DevChat menu.
  3. No age-restricted, obscene or NSFW content. This includes text, images, or links featuring nudity, sex, hard violence, or other graphically disturbing content.
  4. No spam. This includes DMing fellow members.
  5. You must be over the age of 18 years old to participate in our community.
  6. Our community uses Answer Overflow to index content on the web. By posting in this channel your messages will be indexed on the worldwide web to help others find answers.
  7. You agree to our Terms of Service (https://www.devheads.io/terms-of-service/) and Privacy Policy (https://www.devheads.io/privacy-policy)
By clicking "Finish", you have read and agreed to the our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

Why is my assembler subroutine for Shellsort not sorting the array when integrated with a C program

In a group work where we are trying to integrate an assembler subroutine for sorting numbers `Shellsort` with a `C` program, the sorting algorithm has been tested as a standalone program and works correctly, but we are encountering issues when linking it with the `C` code. Specifically, the output array contains the original numbers in the same order instead of being sorted.

We are passing the pointer to the array through the `RCX` register, which is the correct method for passing function parameters in `Intel 64`. Since the `C` source code was provided by our lead, we suspect there might be an issue in our assembly code.

We are using this function signature in the `C` code to call the assembly routine:

  void mysort(uint32_t array[], uint32_t len);

We read the input from a file into the array:

  len = read(f, array, ARRAY_SIZE * 4);

We call the sorting routine like this:

  mysort(array, len >> 2);

So after running the program using `NASM 2.15` assembler and `GCC 11.2.0` compiler on the `x86-64` architecture with Ubuntu `22.04` OS, the output array contains the numbers in the original order instead of being sorted.

I expected the assembler routine to modify the array in place and return the sorted numbers.

The program runs without any errors, but the output file contains the same numbers in their original order, so the sorting routine didn’t work as expected.

Could someone help identify what’s wrong with the assembler code, especially how we’re passing the array and length through registers `using RCX and RDX`? Are there any issues with how we’re modifying the array in the Shellsort routine?

CONTRIBUTE TO THIS THREAD

Browse other Product Reviews tagged

Leaderboard

RANKED BY XP

All time
  • 1.
    Avatar
    @Nayel115
    1620 XP
  • 2.
    Avatar
    @UcGee
    650 XP
  • 3.
    Avatar
    @melta101
    600 XP
  • 4.
    Avatar
    @lifegochi
    250 XP
  • 5.
    Avatar
    @Youuce
    180 XP
  • 6.
    Avatar
    @hemalchevli
    170 XP