Files
SplitBit-Emulator/Programs/CosmOS/Assembler/labels.asm
T
AnachronautandClaude Opus 5 e20c9bac1f The label table is kept in order, and halved instead of walked
labFind walked the index from the front, so every use of every label
cost a scan of every label defined so far, each with a string compare.
The cost grew with the program being built, which is what made it hurt:
assembling CosmOS on the machine took 1,833,691,267 cycles against the
assembler assembling itself at 57,257,133 - three times the source for
thirty two times the time.

Sorted and halved, the same build is 886,498,996. THE WALK WAS 52 PER
CENT OF THE WHOLE ASSEMBLY, which settles a suspicion this project has
carried unverified for weeks and puts a number on it.

Eleven comparisons against two thousand entries where a walk averaged six
hundred and seventy. The search hands back where a name WOULD go, which
is what adding one needs and what a walk could never have offered, so
labAdd gets its insertion point for nothing.

sameText was already an ordering and did not have to change: Q is the
difference at the first character that differed, and the Carry Flag from
that same subtraction survives the return because nothing puts the Status
register back. A name that runs out while the other carries on borrows
against the other's character, which sorts the shorter first.

Small programs pay about a tenth more - 57.3M to 63.5M for the assembler
on itself - because adding a label now moves the tail of the index up and
a short table was never expensive to walk. That is the right way round
for a trade to fall.

numHalve and numBack are new: a rotate right on a CIRCULAR sixteen bit
register brings bit nought back in at the top, so halving means taking
that bit off again, and the low half has to go down first because the
mask wants B.

WHICH END THE TABLE IS SORTED FROM DOES NOT MATTER. labAdd takes its
insertion point from labFind, so the comparison that decides the order is
the same one that searches it - turn it round and the table is built
backwards and read backwards and no output changes. Tests/break.sh says
so, correctly, by not noticing.

Verified by CosmOS builds CosmOS and second generation staying byte
identical. An indexing bug cannot hide behind a fixed point.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01E2JrLzFvuFX9fgi1LDRjrW
2026-09-06 21:02:05 -04:00

435 lines
11 KiB
NASM

; The label table: the only thing that survives between the two passes.
;
; ---- KEPT IN ORDER, so that a lookup can halve it ----
;
; It used to be walked from the front, and that was most of the assembler. Every use of every
; label paid a scan of every label defined so far, so the cost grew with the program being
; built: assembling CosmOS on the machine took 1.83 billion cycles against the assembler's own
; 57 million - three times the source for thirty two times the time.
;
; Sorted and halved instead, it is 886 million: the walk was 52 per cent of the whole
; assembly. Small programs pay about a tenth more, because adding a label now moves the tail
; of the index up to make room and a short table was never expensive to walk. That is the
; right way round for a trade to fall.
;
; WHICH END IT IS SORTED FROM DOES NOT MATTER, and that is not carelessness. labAdd takes its
; insertion point from labFind, so the comparison that decides the order is the same one that
; searches it; turn it round and the table is built backwards and read backwards and nothing
; else can tell. Which is why breaking that comparison on purpose changes no output at all.
;
; Names are packed end to end in an arena and each index entry holds a pointer into it,
; rather than every entry carrying a field wide enough for the longest name. MEASURED on
; CosmOS, which is the biggest thing this will ever be asked to assemble: 453 labels
; averaging 11.3 characters. Packed they come to about 7,400 bytes; in 32 byte fields they
; would come to 15,400. The arena is worth the handful of extra instructions.
;
; Four bytes an index entry: two saying where the name is, two saying what it resolves to.
;
; A name is stored WITHOUT its colon, so that a definition and a use of it compare equal
; without either side having to know which it was looking at.
;
; The first pass fills this and the second only reads it. That is what makes a forward
; reference ordinary rather than special: by the time anything is emitted, every name in
; the program already has an address.
;
; Written by Anachronaut
#Program
; Empties the table.
labReset:
SETD.0 LabCount
CALL numZero
SETD.0 LabUsed
CALL numZero
SETD.0 LabNext
SETD.2 ScratchLabArena
CALL numSet
SETD.0 LabBase
SETD.2 ScratchLabIndex
CALL numSet
RET
; Adds the name at DP0, meaning the address in A and B. Q is zero if it went in.
;
; A name already in the table is refused rather than replaced: one name may mean one place,
; and quietly taking the second would move everything that referred to the first.
labAdd:
SETD.2 LabPutAddress
STA.2
INCD.2
STB.2
SETD.2 LabSubject
STD.0.2
CALL labFind
BNQ labAddFresh
SETD.0 LabTwice
CALL labComplain
BRI labAddNo
labAddFresh:
SETD.0 LabCount
SETD.2 LabLimit
CALL numCompare
BNC labAddFull ; The index is as full as it goes.
; And the arena, counting the zero that ends the name.
SETD.1 LabSubject
LDD.0.1
CALL labLength
SETD.0 LabEnd
SETD.2 LabUsed
CALL numSet
SETD.0 LabEnd
SETD.2 LabLength
CALL numAdd
SETD.0 LabRoom
SETD.2 LabEnd
CALL numCompare
BRC labAddCrowded ; The arena is smaller than where this name would end.
; ---- Room made for it where it belongs ----
;
; The index is kept in order so that looking a name up can halve the table instead of
; walking it, and labFind left LabLo at the place this name sorts to. Everything from there
; on moves up four bytes, from the END backwards so that nothing is written over before it
; has been read.
;
; It costs about a third of the table copied per label added, which against the walk it
; replaces is nothing: the walk was paid once per USE of a label and this is paid once per
; label, and there are several uses of each.
SETD.0 LabWhich
SETD.2 LabCount
CALL numSet
labAddShift:
SETD.0 LabWhich
SETD.2 LabLo
CALL numCompare
BRQ labAddPlace ; Down to where it goes, so there is nothing left to move.
; The one below this place, moved up into it.
CALL labEntryAt
SETD.1 LabEntry
LDD.1.1 ; DP1 is where it goes.
SETD.0 LabWhich
CALL numBack
CALL labEntryAt
SETD.0 LabEntry
LDD.0.0 ; DP0 is where it comes from.
INIB 0d4
labAddShiftByte:
LDA.0
STA.1
INCD.0
INCD.1
DECB
BNB labAddShiftByte
BRI labAddShift
labAddPlace:
SETD.0 LabWhich
SETD.2 LabLo
CALL numSet
CALL labEntryAt
SETD.1 LabEntry
LDD.0.1
SETD.1 LabNext
LDD.1.1
PSHD.1
POPB
POPA ; The low byte is on top, the way a pointer is pushed.
STA.0
INCD.0
STB.0
INCD.0
SETD.2 LabPutAddress
LDA.2
STA.0
INCD.0
INCD.2
LDA.2
STA.0
; And the name itself, into the arena.
SETD.1 LabNext
LDD.1.1
SETD.2 LabSubject
LDD.0.2
labAddLoop:
LDA.0
STA.1
BRA labAddCopied
INCD.0
INCD.1
BRI labAddLoop
labAddCopied:
INCD.1 ; Past the zero, which was copied with the rest.
SETD.0 LabNext
STD.1.0
SETD.0 LabUsed
SETD.2 LabLength
CALL numAdd
SETD.0 LabCount
CALL numStep
RSTA
RSTB
CCF
ADD
RET
labAddFull:
SETD.0 LabFull
CALL labComplain
BRI labAddNo
labAddCrowded:
SETD.0 LabNoRoom
CALL labComplain
labAddNo:
RSTA
INIB 0d1
CCF
ADD
RET
; Looks up the name at DP0. Q is zero if it is there, and then LabAddress is what it means.
;
; A straight walk from the front. With 453 labels and a few thousand uses of them that is
; the slowest thing the assembler does, and it is deliberately the simple version: sorting
; the table or bucketing it on the first character are both easy later, and neither is
; worth writing before anything has been measured.
labFind:
SETD.2 LabSought
STD.0.2
; ---- Halving the table rather than walking it ----
;
; The names are kept in order, so a lookup is eleven comparisons against two thousand
; entries where a walk was six hundred and seventy. THAT WAS MOST OF THE ASSEMBLER: every
; use of every label paid it, and it grew with the program being built, so assembling
; CosmOS on the machine cost 1.83 billion cycles against the assembler's own 57 million -
; three times the source for thirty two times the time.
;
; LabLo is left at the place the name WOULD go, which is what adding one needs and what a
; walk could never have handed back.
SETD.0 LabLo
CALL numZero
SETD.0 LabHi
SETD.2 LabCount
CALL numSet
labFindStep:
SETD.0 LabLo
SETD.2 LabHi
CALL numCompare
BNC labFindMissing ; Nothing left between them, so it is not here.
; The one in the middle. Adding two numbers under two thousand cannot overflow sixteen
; bits, so there is nothing to carry into.
SETD.0 LabWhich
SETD.2 LabLo
CALL numSet
SETD.0 LabWhich
SETD.2 LabHi
CALL numAdd
SETD.0 LabWhich
CALL numHalve
CALL labEntryAt
SETD.1 LabEntry
LDD.0.1
LDA.0
INCD.0
LDB.0
SETD.0 LabNamePointer
STA.0
INCD.0
STB.0
; ---- sameText is already an ordering ----
;
; Q is the difference at the first character that differed, so zero is a match - and the
; Carry Flag from that same subtraction says which way round they were, and survives the
; return because nothing puts the Status register back. A name that runs out while the
; other carries on borrows against the other's character, which sorts the shorter first,
; which is what anybody means by alphabetical.
SETD.1 LabNamePointer
LDD.0.1
SETD.1 LabSought
LDD.1.1
CALL sameText
BRQ labFindGot
BRC labFindAbove ; The one in the table is the smaller, so look above it.
SETD.0 LabHi
SETD.2 LabWhich
CALL numSet
BRI labFindStep
labFindAbove:
SETD.0 LabLo
SETD.2 LabWhich
CALL numSet
SETD.0 LabLo
CALL numStep
BRI labFindStep
labFindGot:
SETD.1 LabEntry
LDD.0.1
INCD.0
INCD.0
LDA.0
INCD.0
LDB.0
SETD.0 LabAddress
STA.0
INCD.0
STB.0
RSTA
RSTB
CCF
ADD
RET
labFindMissing:
RSTA
INIB 0d1
CCF
ADD
RET
; Where entry number LabWhich is, into LabEntry. Four bytes an entry, so the offset is the
; number doubled twice - there being no multiply on this machine, and none needed.
labEntryAt:
SETD.0 LabOffset
SETD.2 LabWhich
CALL numSet
SETD.0 LabOffset
SETD.2 LabOffset
CALL numAdd
SETD.0 LabOffset
SETD.2 LabOffset
CALL numAdd
SETD.0 LabEntry
SETD.2 LabBase
CALL numSet
SETD.0 LabEntry
SETD.2 LabOffset
CALL numAdd
RET
; How long the string at DP0 is, counting the zero on the end, into LabLength.
labLength:
SETD.1 LabLenWalk
STD.0.1
SETD.0 LabLength
CALL numZero
labLengthLoop:
SETD.0 LabLength
CALL numStep
SETD.1 LabLenWalk
LDD.0.1
LDA.0
BRA labLengthDone
SETD.0 LabLenWalk
CALL numStep
BRI labLengthLoop
labLengthDone:
RET
labComplain:
SWI osPrintString
SETD.0 LabNamed
SWI osPrintString
SETD.0 TokText
SWI osPrintString
SETD.0 LabAtLine
SWI osPrintString
SETD.0 TokLine
LDA.0
INCD.0
LDB.0
SWI osPrintNumber
SETD.0 LabNewLine
SWI osPrintString
RET
#Data
LabCount:
0x00 0x00
LabUsed:
0x00 0x00
LabNext:
0x00 0x00
LabBase:
0x00 0x00
LabAddress:
0x00 0x00
LabPutAddress:
0x00 0x00
LabNamePointer:
0x00 0x00
LabSought:
0x00 0x00
LabSubject:
0x00 0x00
LabEntry:
0x00 0x00
LabOffset:
0x00 0x00
; Where a halving search has got to, and where a name that is not there would go. LabLo is
; what labAdd makes room at, which is the whole reason the search hands it back.
LabLo:
0x00 0x00
LabHi:
0x00 0x00
LabWhich:
0x00 0x00
LabLength:
0x00 0x00
LabLenWalk:
0x00 0x00
LabEnd:
0x00 0x00
; How many labels there may be, and how many bytes of name between them.
;
; SIZED FOR THE ASSEMBLER ITSELF, which turns out to be the largest thing it is asked to
; build: the assembler is about 555 labels, against CosmOS's 1,341 and 16,758 bytes of name
; measured 2026-09-06 - CosmOS is much the bigger of the two now, and was the smaller when
; this was written. Running into either
; limit says so rather than writing past the end of the table, and that is what it did. The buffers live
; above the program rather than inside it - see the scratch map in Asm.asm.
; Two thousand and forty eight names, and twenty six kilobytes to hold them in. Both have
; now been doubled twice, and BOTH TIMES THE NAMES RAN OUT FIRST with the index a couple of
; hundred behind them - 8,081 of 8,192 the first time, 16,758 of 16,384 the second. A name
; is thirteen bytes on average and an index entry is four, so the arena will always be the
; one that speaks; raising it alone would buy a few hundred labels and then the other wall.
; THESE TWO MUST AGREE WITH THE SCRATCH MAP, which says where the room actually is.
LabLimit:
0x08 0x00
LabRoom:
0x68 0x00
LabNamed:
": "
LabAtLine:
", at line "
LabNewLine:
"
"
LabTwice:
"that label is defined twice"
LabFull:
"too many labels"
LabNoRoom:
"no room left for label names"