3. Data Transfer Instructions

One of the basic instructions in the assembly language is the mov instruction. As the name suggest, this instruction moves data from one location to another (from source to destination). The general form of the mov instruction is as follows; this is similar to the assignment operation in a high-level language:

mov dst,src

There are different variations of the mov instruction, which will be covered next.

3.1 Moving a Constant Into Register

The first variation of the mov instruction is to move a constant (or immediate value) into a register. In the following examples, ; (a semicolon) indicates the start of the comment; anything after the semicolon is not part of the assembly instruction. This is just a brief description to help you understand this concept:

mov eax,10  ; moves 10 into EAX register, same as eax=10
mov bx,7    ; moves 7 in bx register, same as bx=7
mov eax,64h ; moves hex value 0x64 (i.e 100) into EAX

3.2 Moving Values From Register To Register

Moving a...