High Level Assembly

HLA's compile-time language allows extending the language with ease, even creating small domain-specific languages to help easily solve common programming problems. The macro stdout.put is a good example of a sophisticated macro that can simplify programming. Consider the following invocation of that macro:

stdout.put( "I=", i, " s=", s, " u=", u, " r=", r:10:2, nl );

The stdout.put macro processes each of the arguments to determine the argument's type and then calls an appropriate procedure in the HLA Standard library to handle the output of each of these operands.

Most assemblers provide some sort of macro ability: the advantage that HLA offers over other assemblers is that it can process macro arguments like r:10:2 using HLA's extensive compile-time string functions, and HLA's macro facilities can infer the types of variables and use that information to direct macro expansion.

HLA's macro language provides a special Context-Free macro facility. This feature allows easily writing macros that span other sections of code via a starting and terminating macro pair (along with optional intermediate macro invocations that are only available between the start–terminate macros). For example, one can write a fully recursive-nestable SWITCH–CASE–DEFAULT–ENDSWITCH statement using this macro facility.

Because of the HLA macro facilities context-free design, these switch..case..default..endswitch statements can be nested, and the nested statements' emitted code will not conflict with the outside statements.

The HLA macro system is actually a subset of a larger feature known as the HLA Compile-Time Language (CTL). The HLA CTL is an interpreted language that is available in an HLA program source file. An interpreter executes HLA CTL statements during the compiling of an HLA source file; hence the name compile-time language.

The HLA CTL includes many control statements such as #IF, #WHILE, #FOR, #PRINT, an assignment statement and so on. One can also create compile-time variables and constants (including structured data types such as records and unions). The HLA CTL also provides hundreds of built-in functions (including a very rich set of string and pattern-matching functions). The HLA CTL allows programmers to create CTL programs that scan and parse strings, allowing those programmers to create embedded domain-specific languages (EDSLs, also termed mini-languages). The stdout.put macro appearing earlier is an example of such an EDSL. The put macro (in the stdout namespace, hence the name stdout.put) parses its macro parameter list and emits the code that will print its operands.

The HLA Standard Library is an extensive set of pre-made routines and macros (like the stdout.put macro described above) that make life easier for programmers, saving them from starting from scratch every time they write a new application. Perhaps just as important, the HLA Standard Library allows programmers to write portable applications that run under Windows or Linux with nothing more than recompiling the source code. Like the C standard library for the programming language C, the HLA Standard Library allows users to abstract away low-level operating system (OS) calls, so the same set of OS application programming interfaces (APIs) can serve for all operating systems that HLA supports. While an assembly language allows making any needed OS calls, where programs use the HLA Standard Library API set, writing OS-portable programs is easy.

The HLA Standard Library provides thousands of functions, procedures, and macros. While the list changes over time, as of mid-2010 for HLA v2.12, it included functions in these categories:

• Command-line argument processing
• Array (dynamic) declaration and manipulation
• Bit manipulation
• Blob (binary large object) manipulation
• Character manipulation
• Conversions
• Character set manipulation
• Date and time functions
• Object-oriented file I/O
• Standard file I/O
• File system manipulation functions, e.g., delete, rename, change directory
• HLA-related declarations and functions
• The HLA Object Windows Library: object-oriented framework for Win32 programming
• Linked list manipulation
• Mathematical functions
• Memory allocation and management
• FreeBSD-specific APIs
• Linux-specific APIs
• MacOS-specific APIs
• Win32-specific APIs
• Text console functions
• Coroutine support
• Environment variable support
• Exception handling support
• Memory-mapped file support
• Sockets and client–server object support
• Thread and synchronization support
• Timer functions
• Pattern matching support for regular expressions and context-free languages
• Random number generators
• Remote procedure call support
• Standard error output functions
• Standard output functions
• Standard input functions
• String functions
• Table (associative) support
• Zero-terminated string functions

The HLA v2.x language system is a command-line driven tool that consists of several components, including a shell program (e.g., hla.exe under Windows), the HLA language compiler (e.g., hlaparse.exe), a low-level translator (e.g., the HLABE, or HLA Back Engine), a linker (link.exe under Windows, ld under Linux), and other tools such as a resource compiler for Windows. Versions before 2.0 relied on an external assembler back end; versions 2.x and later of HLA use the built-in HLABE as the back-end object code formatter.

The HLA shell application processes command line parameters and routes appropriate files to each of the programs that make up the HLA system. It accepts as input .hla files (HLA source files), .asm files (source files for MASM, TASM, FASM, NASM, or Gas assemblers), .obj files for input to the linker, and .rc files (for use by a resource compiler).

Originally, the HLA v1.x tool compiled its source code into an intermediate source file that a back-end assembler such as MASM, TASM, flat assembler (FASM), Netwide Assembler (NASM), or GNU Assembler (Gas) would translate into the low-level object code file. As of HLA v2.0, HLA included its own HLA Back Engine (HLABE) that provided the low-level object code translation. However, via various command-line parameters, HLA v2.x still has the ability to translate an HLA source file into a source file that is compatible with one of these other assemblers.

The HLA Back Engine (HLABE) is a compiler back end that translates an internal intermediate language into low-level Portable Executable (PE), Common Object File Format (COFF), Executable and Linkable Format (ELF), or Mach-O object code. An HLABE program mostly consists of data (byte) emission statements, 32-bit relocatable address statements, x86 control-transfer instructions, and various directives. In addition to translating the byte and relocatable address statements into the low-level object code format, HLABE also handles branch-displacement optimization (picking the shortest possible form of a branch instruction).

Although the HLABE is incorporated into the HLA v2.x compiler, it is actually a separate product. It is public domain and open source (hosted on SourceForge.net).