Editing Parrot assembly language

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The '''Parrot assembly language''' ('''PASM''') is the basic [[assembly language]] used by the [[Parrot virtual machine]].{{fact|date=November 2021}}

PASM is the lowest level assembly language in the Parrot stack. The [[Parrot intermediate representation]] (PIR) is PASM extended to simplify development of compilers.

The [[hello world program]] in PASM is simply:
 print "Hello world!\n"
 end

Although it appears similar to [[source code]] in some [[high-level programming language]]s, more complex PASM programs will resemble other assembly languages. The main exceptions to this [[Low-level programming language|low level programming]] in PASM are string handling and, as shown above, input and output. Additionally, PASM has automatic [[garbage collection (computer science)|garbage collection]] from the virtual machine, and it does not allow [[pointer arithmetic]].

Parrot assembly language has more instructions than hardware assembly languages, even  [[Complex instruction set computer|CISC]] processors. This is because the [[marginal cost]] of creating a new instruction in Parrot is low compared to the marginal cost of doing so in hardware, and the creators of Parrot had no particular goal of [[Minimalism (computing)|minimalism]].

==External sources==
{{Portal|Free and open-source software}}

==References==
{{Reflist}}


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[[Category:Assembly languages]]
[[Category:Perl]]