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Assembler directives
Assembly language: low-level languages for programming computers,

microprocessors, microcontrollers, and other IC
Assembler Directive: a statement to give direction to the assembler to perform task
of the assembly process
 control the organization of the program

 provide necessary information to the assembler to understand ALPs and
generate necessary machine codes
 Indicate how an operand or a section of the program is to be processed by
the assembler
 Consists of two types of statements: instructions and directives
• Instructions: translated to the machine code by the assembler
• Directives are not translated to the machine codes
Important Assembler Directives of the 8086 Microprocessor
Data declaration directives: DB, DW, DD, DQ, DT

ASSUME
END directives
EQU Directive
PROC
ORG
SEGMENT
GROUP, INCLUDE, EVEN, ALIGN
EXTRN, PUBLIC,
TYPE, PTR,
LENGTH, OFFSET
NAME, LABEL, SHORT, GLOBAL
Data declaration directives
1. DB - The DB directive is used to declare a BYTE -2-BYTE variable - A BYTE is made up of 8

bits.
examples:
PRICES DB 49H, 98H, 29H; Declare array of 3 bytes named PRICES and initialize them
with specified values
TEMP DB 100 DUP (?); Set aside 100 bytes of storage in memory and give it the name
TEMP. But leave the 100 bytes un-initialized
2. DW - The DW directive is used to declare a WORD type variable - A WORD occupies 16

bits or (2 BYTE).
examples:
WORDS DW 1234H, 3456H; Declares an array of 2 words and initialize them with the
specified values
3. DD - The DD directive is used to declare a DWORD - A DWORD double word is made up of

32 bits =2 Word's or 4 BYTE.
examples:
ARRAY DD 25629261H; This will define a double word named ARRAY and initialize the
double word with the specified value when the program is loaded into memory to be run.
The low word, 9261H, will be put in memory at a lower address than the high word.
DQ (DEFINE QUADWORD)
The DQ directive is used to tell the assembler to declare a variable 4 words in length or to
reserve 4 words of storage in memory.
Example:
BIG_NUMBER DQ 243598740192A92BH; This will declare a variable named
BIG_NUMBER and initialize the 4 words set aside with the specified number when the
program is loaded into memory to be run.
DT (DEFINE TEN BYTES)

The DT directive is used to tell the assembler to declare a variable, which is 10 bytes in
length or to reserve 10 bytes of storage in memory.
Example:
PACKED_BCD DT 11223344556677889900
This will declare an array named PACKED_BCD, which is 10 bytes in length. It will initialize
the 10 bytes with the values 11, 22, 33, 44, 55, 66, 77, 88, 99, and 00 when the program is
loaded into memory to be run. The statement RESULT DT 20H DUP (0) will declare an
array of 20H blocks of 10 bytes each and initialize all 320 bytes to 00 when the program is
loaded into memory to be run.
ASSUME DIRECTIVE
ASSUME Directive - The ASSUME directive is used to tell the assembler that the name of the
logical segment should be used for a specified segment. The 8086 works directly with only 4
physical segments: a Code segment, a data segment, a stack segment, and an extra
segment.
Example:
ASSUME CS:CODE ;This tells the assembler that the logical segment
named CODE contains the instruction statements for the program and
should be treated as a code segment.
Example:
ASSUME DS:DATA ;This tells the assembler that for any instruction which
refers to a data in the data segment, data will found in the logical segment
DATA.
End directive
END - End Program

ENDP - End Procedure
ENDS - End Segment
END – it signifies the end of the program module. The assembler will ignore any
statement after an END directive
ENDP - indicates the end of a procedure
Syntax: Procedure_name ENDP
ENDS - indicates the end of a logical segment
Syntax: Segment_name ENDS
Equate (EQU) Directive
EQU - This EQU directive is used to give a name to some value or to a symbol. Each time
the assembler finds the name in the program, it will replace the name with the
value or symbol you given to that name.
Example:
FACTOR EQU 03H ; you has to write this statement at the starting of your program
later in the program you can use this as follows :
ADD AL, FACTOR ; When it codes this instruction the assembler will code it as
ADDAL, 03H ;The advantage of using EQU in this manner is, if FACTOR is used many
no of times in a program and you want to change the value, all you had to do is
change the EQU statement at beginning, it will changes the rest of all.
ORG (ORIGIN)
ORG Changes the starting offset address of the data in the data segment. As an
assembler assembles a section of a data declarations or instruction statements, it uses a
location counter to keep track of how many bytes it is from the start of a segment at any
time.
The location counter is automatically set to 0000 when assembler starts reading a
segment.
The ORG directive allows you to set the location counter to a desired value at any point
in the program.
Example:
The statement ORG 2000H tells the assembler to set the location counter to
2000H.
SEGMENT
SEGMENT directive : to indicate the start of a logical segment
Syntax: Segment_name SEGMENT
Additional terms are often added to a SEGMENT directive statement to indicate some
special way in which we want the assembler to treat the segment.
 CODE SEGMENT WORD ; tells the assembler that we want the content of this
segment located on the next available word (even address) when segments are
combined and given absolute addresses.
 Without this WORD addition, the segment will be located on the next available
paragraph (16-byte) address, which might waste as much as 15 bytes of memory.
 The statement CODE SEGMENT PUBLIC tells the assembler that the segment may be
put together with other segments named CODE from other assembly modules when
the modules are linked together.
Finding the factorial of an 8 /16 bit number.
• Input : 04H • Input : 06H

• Output : 18H • Output : 02D0H
• as In Decimal : 4*3*2*1 = 24 • as In Decimal : 6*5*4*3*2*1 = 720
In Hexadecimal : 24 = 18H • In Hexadecimal : 720 = 02D0H
• Input : 04H
• Output : 18H
• as In Decimal : 4*3*2*1 = 24
In Hexadecimal : 24 = 18H
• Input : 04H • Assumptions –

• Output : 18H Starting address of program: 0400
Input memory location: 0500
• as In Decimal : 4*3*2*1 = 24 Output memory location: 0600 and 0601
• Input : 04H • Assumptions –

• Output : 18H Starting address of program: 0400
Input memory location: 0500
• as In Decimal : 4*3*2*1 = 24 Output memory location: 0600 and 0601
MOV CX, [0500] CX <- [0500]
• Assumptions –
MOV AX, 0001 AX <- 0001
Starting address of program:
0400 MOV DX, 0000 DX <- 0000
Input memory location: 0500 MUL CX DX:AX <- AX * CX
Output memory location:
0600 and 0601 LOOP 040A Go To [040A] till
CX->00
MOV [0600], AX [0600]<-AX
MOV [0601], DX [0601]<-DX
HLT Stop Execution

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Assembler directives

Assembly language: low-level languages for programming computers,

 control the organization of the program

Data declaration directives: DB, DW, DD, DQ, DT

1. DB - The DB directive is used to declare a BYTE -2-BYTE variable - A BYTE is made up of 8

2. DW - The DW directive is used to declare a WORD type variable - A WORD occupies 16

3. DD - The DD directive is used to declare a DWORD - A DWORD double word is made up of

DT (DEFINE TEN BYTES)

END - End Program

• Input : 04H • Input : 06H

• Input : 04H • Assumptions –

• Input : 04H • Assumptions –

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