[TUHS] Plan 9 assembly syntax design history?

[TUHS] Plan 9 assembly syntax design history?

[Robert Clausecker]

Ken's (?) Plan 9 assemblers are well known for their idiosyncratic
syntax, placing identical behaviour across platforms over a sense
of resemblance to people used to normal assemblers.  While I am
aware of Rob's talk [1] on the basic design ideas and have read both
the Plan 9 [2] and Go [3] assembler manuals, many aspects of the
design (such as the strange way to specify static data) are
unclear and seem poorly documented.

Is there some document or other piece of information I can read on
the history of these assemblers?  Or maybe someone recalls more bits
about these details?

Yours,
Robert Clausecker

[1]: https://talks.golang.org/2016/asm.slide
[2]: https://9p.io/sys/doc/asm.html
[3]: https://golang.org/doc/asm
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Re: [TUHS] Plan 9 assembly syntax design history?

[Anthony Martin]

Robert Clausecker <fuz@fuz.su> once said:
> While I am aware of Rob's talk [1] on the basic design ideas
> and have read both the Plan 9 [2] and Go [3] assembler
> manuals, many aspects of the design (such as the strange way
> to specify static data) are unclear and seem poorly
> documented.
>
> [...]
>
> [1]: https://talks.golang.org/2016/asm.slide
> [2]: https://9p.io/sys/doc/asm.html
> [3]: https://golang.org/doc/asm

Note that the Plan 9 compilers do not actually generate
machine code. They build an intermediate abstract object
code that the linkers then translate into machine code.

The syntax used by the assemblers is essentially a textual
representation of that intermediate code. If you want to
understand the design and it's idiosyncrasies, focus on the
latter.

Cheers,
  Anthony