How do you get assembler output from C/C++ source in gcc?

Solution 1:

Use the -S option to gcc (or g++).

gcc -S helloworld.c

This will run the preprocessor (cpp) over helloworld.c, perform the initial compilation and then stop before the assembler is run.

By default this will output a file helloworld.s. The output file can be still be set by using the -o option.

gcc -S -o my_asm_output.s helloworld.c

Of course this only works if you have the original source. An alternative if you only have the resultant object file is to use objdump, by setting the --disassemble option (or -d for the abbreviated form).

objdump -S --disassemble helloworld > helloworld.dump

This option works best if debugging option is enabled for the object file (-g at compilation time) and the file hasn't been stripped.

Running file helloworld will give you some indication as to the level of detail that you will get by using objdump.

Solution 2:

This will generate assembly code with the C code + line numbers interweaved, to more easily see which lines generate what code:

# create assembler code:
g++ -S -fverbose-asm -g -O2 test.cc -o test.s
# create asm interlaced with source lines:
as -alhnd test.s > test.lst

Found in Algorithms for programmers, page 3 (which is the overall 15th page of the PDF).