3. Assemblers

Assemblers

Mnemonic instructions, such as $\text{Load }Y$, are easy for humans to write and understand but can’t be interpreted by computers.

Assembler

Assemblers translate mnemonic instructions into **machine language** that can be executed by computers.

An object program file is created from mnemonic source code in two passes: ?

• 1st pass: the assembler assembles as much of the program as possible it can while it builds a symbol table that contains memory references for all symbols in the program.
• 2nd pass: the instructions are completed using the values from the symbol table.

Link to original