TABLE OF CONTENTS We have given an overview of the MIPS assembly language in the last chapter. This chapter discusses how procedures are written in the MIPS assembly language. Procedure is an important programming construct that facilitates modular programming. Procedures can be divided into leaf and nonleaf procedures. A leaf procedure does not call other procedures. On the other hand, a nonleaf procedure calls other procedures. In the MIPS architecture, we can implement simple leaf procedures without using the stack. Nonleaf procedures always need to use the stack, at least to store the return address of the calling procedure.
In this chapter, we discuss how both leaf and nonleaf procedures are implemented in the assembly language. Our initial discussion deals with simple leaf procedures that can be implemented using the registers. Then we look at how the stack is implemented in the MIPS architecture. The details about the stack implementation are useful in understanding how we can handle nonleaf procedures in the assembly language.
Parameter passing is an important aspect of procedure invocation. As you know, we can use either the call-by-value or call-by-reference mechanism for parameter passing. Here we give details on how we can implement these two types of parameter-passing mechanisms in the assembly language programs.
A procedure is a logically self-contained unit of code designed to perform a specific task. Procedures are sometimes called subprograms and play an important role in modular program development. In high-level languages, there are two types of subprograms: procedures and functions
