Assembler

The Pravda assembler (PASM) is a text representation of Pravda VM bytecode.

Let's consider one simple program written in PASM:

/* My program */
jump @main
@ok:
push "good"
jump @end
@main:
push 2
mul
push 8
gt
jumpi @ok
push "bad"
@end:

It pops an item from the stack and multiplies it by 2. If it is less than 8 it pushes "good" to the stack, otherwise it pushes "bad".

pasm operations are easy to understand. There are several things that differ from low-level bytecode:

  1. You can define labels: @my_label:.
  2. Jump to defined labels jump @my_label. Jump with the condition jumi @my_label and jump to functions with preserved call-stack call @my_label.
  3. Push the primitive to the stack:push <primitive>. Or put an item to the heap: new <data> (in this case reference to data will be pushed to the stack).
  4. Write comments: /* a comment */.
  5. Work with structs: struct_mut <primitive>, struct_get <primitive>. This will produce STRUCT_MUT_STATIC and STRUCT_GET_STATIC opcodes that take the key for the struct field from bytecode. You can write struct_mut or struct_get without <primitive> literal. In this case, STRUCT_MUT and STRUCT_GET opcodes are used and the key is taken from the stack.
  6. Use the regular orphan opcodes.
  7. Add meta information via meta <meta>, see <meta> definition for details.

See also string data encoding.