dos - Print integer to console in x86 assembly

Question

When I add two values in 16 bit assembly, what is the best way to print the result to console?

At the moment I have this code:

;;---CODE START---;;
mov ax, 1   ;put 1 into ax
add ax, 2   ; add 2 to ax current value
mov ah,2  ; 2 is the function number of output char in the DOS Services.
mov dl, ax ; DL takes the value.
int 21h    ; calls DOS Services

mov ah,4Ch   ; 4Ch is the function number for exit program in DOS Services.
int 21h      ; function 4Ch doesn't care about anything in the registers.
;;---CODE END---;;

I think that dl value should be in ASCII code, but I'm not sure how to convert ax value after addition into ASCII.

Answer 1

You basically want to divide by 10, print the remainder (one digit), and then repeat with the quotient.

    ; assume number is in eax
    mov ecx, 10

loophere:
    mov edx, 0
    div ecx

    ; now eax <-- eax/10
    ;     edx <-- eax % 10

    ; print edx
    ; this is one digit, which we have to convert to ASCII
    ; the print routine uses edx and eax, so let's push eax
    ; onto the stack. we clear edx at the beginning of the
    ; loop anyway, so we don't care if we much around with it

    push eax

    ; convert dl to ascii
    add dl, '0'

    mov ah,2  ; 2 is the function number of output char in the DOS Services.
    int 21h    ; calls DOS Services

    ; now restore eax
    pop eax

    ; if eax is zero, we can quit

    cmp eax, 0
    jnz loophere

---

As a side note, you have a bug in your code right here:

mov ax, 1   ;put 1 into ax
add ax, 2   ; add 2 to ax current value
mov ah,2  ; 2 is the function number of output char in the DOS Services.
mov dl, ax ; DL takes the value.

You put 2 in ah, and then you put ax in dl. You're basically junking ax before printing it.

You also have a size mismatch since dl is 8 bits wide and ax is 16 bits wide.

What you should do is flip the last two lines and fix the size mismatch:

mov ax, 1   ;put 1 into ax
add ax, 2   ; add 2 to ax current value

mov dl, al ; DL takes the value.
mov ah,2  ; 2 is the function number of output char in the DOS Services.