Re: A chip too far? Where is your solution Mr Larkin?

"John Larkin" <jjlarkin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:2sgoa4945ih348ds266lf71fn4h3uunr37@xxxxxxxxxx
Your program has not a single comment, no indication of purpose,
version, usage, authorship, limitations, or context. It looks like
monkeys pounding on typewriters, and is literally "code" in the sense
that it would have to be decoded character-by-character for anyone
(including yourself, a few months from now) to understand what it
does. If it were non-trivial, or important, all this would be much
worse.

And all caps is any better? Gack, how can you stand to read that? It makes
my eyes burn...

Now here's some code that's easy on the eyes (partial excerpts, the complete
file is 21kB).

-=-=-=-

; VIEWBMP.ASM -- opens and displays the specified bitmap file.
; Loads the specified bitmap file, displays some specs on it
; then views it on the graphics screen.
;
; /? = prints help screen,
; /F = Fast mode (skips spec screen, goes right to the graphics)
;
; Returns exit code 0 if everything went correctly or
; the help screen was displayed, 1 if a general error occured,
; any other number if an MS-DOS error occured.
;

..MODEL small
..8086

DataSeg SEGMENT word

;
; -=-=- Variables -=-=-
;

runSlow word -1 ; boolean, /F turns off
hasFN word 0 ; boolean set with filename token
fileHndl word ? ; MS-DOS File handle
bitHdr1 bitFileHeader {}

;
; -=-=- Strings -=-=-
;

msgFailFl byte "Invalid file name: $"
msgFailFF byte 13,10
byte "Invalid file format.",13,10,"$"
msgFailBF byte "Bad file name or cannot open file.",13,10

DataSeg ENDS

;
; -=-=- Code begins here -=-=-
;

CodeSeg SEGMENT

ASSUME CS:CodeSeg,DS:DataSeg,ES:DataSeg
cld
push ds
pop es ; copy DS to ES manually...

;
; Get own Program Segment Prefix and retrieve the first command line
; parameter from it.
;

mov ah,62h
int 21h ; get PSP in BX
mov ch,0
push ds

ASSUME CS:CodeSeg,DS:nothing,ES:DataSeg
mov ds,bx
mov cl,ds:[80h] ; get and save length
inc cx ; scan to one past the end
; so the last token is valid
mov si,81h ; DS:SI = command line

.. . .

;
; -=-=- Procedures -=-=-
;

;
; copyToken: finds the next token in the input string and copies it
; to an the output string.
; Input:
; DS:SI = input string location,
; ES:DI = output string location,
; CX = (unsigned) maximum number of bytes to scan.
; Make sure source has as much as CX bytes to scan and destination
; has as much as CX+1 free capacity allocated.
; Returns:
; DS:SI = delimiter which terminated this token,
; ES:DI = end of token copied,
; CX = number of bytes remaining. If CX = -1, copy ran out of
; bytes and the return string is probably incomplete.
;
copyToken PROC near USES ax
ASSUME CS:CodeSeg, DS:nothing, ES:nothing
jcxz loopOut ; trivial case
nextChar: lodsb ; get a character
call isDelimiter
jnz outChar
loop nextChar ; keep going until a token is found
jmp loopOut ; didn't find one, leave
outChar: ; found a token, copy it
stosb ; copy the first char
dec cx
jz loopOut
nextCharT: lodsb
call isDelimiter ; keep going until a delimiter
jz outCopyT ; is found
stosb
loop nextCharT
jmp loopOut
outCopyT: dec si
outCopy: ret

loopOut: mov cx,-1 ; loop fell through, set CX = -1
jmp outCopy

copyToken ENDP

....

CodeSeg ENDS

END

-=-=-=-

Much easier to read, if I do say so myself.

Tim

--
Deep Friar: a very philosophical monk.
Website: http://webpages.charter.net/dawill/tmoranwms


.

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