Inline assembler and virtual registers

Inline assembly code for the compiler always specifies virtual registers. The compiler chooses the physical registers to be used for each instruction during code generation, and enables the compiler to fully optimize the assembly code and surrounding C or C++ code.

The pc (r15), lr (r14), and sp (r13) registers cannot be accessed at all. An error message is generated when these registers are accessed.

The initial values of virtual registers are undefined. Therefore, you must write to virtual registers before reading them. The compiler warns you if code reads a virtual register before writing to it. The compiler also generates these warnings for legacy code that relies on particular values in physical registers at the beginning of inline assembly code, for example:

int add(int i, int j)
{
    int res;
    __asm
    {
        ADD res, r0, r1   // relies on i passed in r0 and j passed in r1
    }
    return res;
}

This code generates warning and error messages.

The errors are generated because virtual registers r0 and r1 are read before writing to them. The warnings are generated because r0 and r1 must be defined as C or C++ variables. The corrected code is:

int add(int i, int j)
{
    int res;
    __asm
    {
        ADD res, i, j
    }
    return res;
}