Array of variable length in MIPS assembly language

Question

In MIPS, I know that I can declare an array as:

list: .space 20

However, what if I wanted to create an array of different size based on user input? Is this possible?

For example, the program would ask the user to input an integer N and create an array of length N.

Richard Pennington · Accepted Answer · 2012-02-09 04:06:03Z

2

That's a good question. In assembly language, variables declared as you've done are statically allocated, that is they're allocated at assembly time. If you want to allocate a variable based on user input at run time you have at least two choices: Allocate space on the stack (and watch for stack overflow) or allocate from a memory pool, usually called the heap. In either case, the allocation is done at rum time rather than at assembly time.

answered Feb 9, 2012 at 4:06

Richard Pennington

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Patrik · Accepted Answer · 2012-02-09 11:43:39Z

2

You can use system call 9 to allocate memory on the heap

li $a0, numbytes
li $v0, 9
syscall

The address is returned in $v0

answered Feb 9, 2012 at 11:43

Patrik

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