Epic Code Rap Battle

A fun game with Substack.

It happened like this;

Chris Best

did a great interview with

Mills, 𝔄𝔯𝔠𝔥𝔢𝔱𝔯𝔬𝔫𝔢𝔰𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔒𝔟𝔩𝔞𝔩𝔦𝔞

.

I was all substack-jazzed-up from watching that, when I hit some kind of bug.
In my steaming hubris, I declared war.

The creeping concern that I may have fallen into the habit of being totally full of crap, has now goaded me into action.

First Code

make.sh

#!/bin/bash
tcc -c print_string.s && tcc -bt -g print_string.o main.c && ./a.out 

print_string.s

.text
.globl print_string
print_string:
    pushq %rbp             // save previous base pointer
    movq  %rsp, %rbp       // initialize new stack frame

    movq  %rdi, %r8        // save string address to r8
    xorl  %edx, %edx       // initialize length to 0
    leaq  (%r8), %rsi      // load current string address into rsi
loop_start:
    movzbl (%rsi), %eax    // load a byte from the string into al
    testb  %al, %al        // check if the byte is zero
    jz    loop_end         // if zero, end of string reached
    incq  %rsi             // increment current string address
    incq  %rdx             // increment length
    jmp   loop_start       // continue looping
loop_end:
    movl  $1, %edi         // load file descriptor (stdout) into edi
    movq  %r8, %rsi        // move original string address back to rsi
    movl  $0x01, %eax      // load syscall number for write into eax
    movq  %rdx, %rdx       // move length to rdx
    syscall                // invoke syscall

    popq %rbp              // restore previous base pointer
    ret                    // return from function

main.c

extern void print_string(const char *str);

int main() {
    const char *hello = "Hello, World!\n";
    const char *pad = "0123456789012345678901234567890123456789\n";
    
    print_string(hello);
    print_string(pad);
    
    return 0;
}

Well, imagine my surprise to discover C is recounting it’s string lengths every chance it gets. Now in my old life, we move on from these kinds of things.

But this is bullshit.

So the obvious solution is to write up a new language on my way to competing with Substack as one programmer. lol

---

June - The start of L0 will target a music player.

A few keys on a typewriter.