XlogicX Blog

Assembly_is_Too_High-Level_-_BSWAPin_16-bit_Registers

 

But what actually happens?

As it turns out, the Intel manual is correct in stating that you should use xchg instead of bswap. In practice, it's hard to say the result of this 16-bit bswap is 'undefined;' as it is consistent with what it does each time. Instead of swapping the contents of ah and al 8-bit registers within ax, it actually just clears the register to 0x00. I tried a lot of different values to test this, and it always zero's it out. I also tried fully loading up eax, and bswap'ing any value for ax just cleared the ax part, leaving the upper part of eax intact.

So in practice: bswap reg16 = xor reg16, reg16 = mov reg16, 0 (were both reg16's are the same register in the xor)