> # Volume Three:

> # Basic Assembly Language

> Volume Three: Basic Assembly Language

> Chapter One: Constants, Variables, and Data Types
> How to declare objects in HLA.
> Chapter Two: Character Strings
> A discussion of HLA's character string representation and an introduction to string routines in the HLA Standard Library.
> Chapter Three: Characters and Character Sets
> A discussion of characters and the operations on them plus character sets and HLA's representation of character sets.
> Chapter Four: Arrays
> How to declare and access elements of arrays.
> Chapter Five: Records, Unions, and Namespaces
> How to declare records (structures) and how to access the fields within those records.
> Chapter Six: Dates and Times
> Dates and Times are two important data types whose importance was underscored by the Y2K problem. This chapter discusses how to properly implement these data types.
> Chapter Seven: File I/O
> Maintaining persistent information (across executions) within your programs.
> Chapter Eight: Introduction to Procedures
> The ability to create your own procedures is of great importance in any program. This chapter discusses HLA's high level procedure declaration syntax and how to call procedures you've written.
> Chapter Nine: Managing Large Programs
> This chapter discusses how to break up a program into modules and separately compile them.
> Chapter Ten: Integer Arithmetic
> This chapter discusses how to compute the values of integer expressions. In particular, it describes how to convert arithmetic expressions into assembly language.
> Chapter Eleven: Real Arithmetic
> This chapter discusses how to compute the values of floating point expressions. In particular, it describes how to convert arithmetic expressions into assembly language.
> Chapter Twelve: Calculation Via Table Lookups
> This chapter discusses how to quickly compute some value using a table lookup.
> Chapter Thirteen: Questions, Projects, and Laboratory Exercises
> Test your knowledge.

> This Volume provides a basic introduction to assembly language programming. By the end of this volume you should be able to write meaningful programs using HLA. This Volume plus Volume Four present all the basic skills a typical assembly language programmer needs to write real-world applications in assembly language.

> Chapters One through Seven provide information about important data types and data structures found in typical assembly language programs. For courses that have a limited amount of time available, Chapters One, Four, and Five from this set are the most important, closely followed by Chapters Two and Seven. Chapters Three and Six are optional though students should read these on their own.

> Chapters Eight and Ten are also essential. Chapters Nine and Eleven are important and the course should cover them if time permits. Chapter Twelve discusses an optimization that is becoming less and less important as CPU speeds vastly outstrip memory access times. Those interested in programming embedded systems should read this chapter, other instructors may elect to skip this material.