By starting with a complete, accessible picture of the internal operations of PCs, presenting a systematic approach to the process of writing, testing, and debugging programs in assembly language, and providing how-to information for using procedures and macros, this third edition offers beginners and intermediate programmers a solid and comprehensive understanding of how to cope with the complexity of assembly programming.

In the past four or five years, Ubuntu Linux has emerged as the best-supported and most widely used Linux distro, and Linux differs from Windows in that simple “terminal apps” may easily be created in assembly. All the tutorial material in this edition has been recast for Ubuntu Linux. The NASM assembler is still available (and much improved!) and will be retained. The portable and widely used Eclipse IDE system can be used with NASM and will be used for all tutorial presentations. The gcc compiler will be used for linking and gdb for debugging. Both utilities are shipped with Ubuntu Linux and are very widely used. Linux itself is written in gcc. All software mentioned in the book is downloadable without charge from the Internet.