Cs/act 221
Shift Instruction
Shifts the bits in the first operand (destination operand) to the left or right by the number of bits specified in the second operand (count operand). Bits shifted beyond the destination operand boundary are first shifted into the CF flag, then discarded. At the end of the shift operation, the CF flag contains the last bit shifted out of the destination operand.
The shift arithmetic left (SAL) and shift logical left (SHL)
Instructions perform the same operation; they shift the bits in the destination operand to the left (toward more significant bit locations). For each shift count, the most significant bit of the destination operand is shifted into the CF flag, and the least significant bit is cleared.
The shift arithmetic right (SAR) and shift logical right (SHR)
Instructions shift the bits of the destination operand to the right (toward less significant bit locations). For each shift count, the least significant bit of the destination operand is shifted into the CF flag, and the most significant bit is either set or cleared depending on the instruction type. The SHR instruction clears the most significant bit. The SAR instruction sets or clears the most significant bit to correspond to the sign (most significant bit) of the original value in the destination operand. In effect, the SAR instruction fills the empty bit position's shifted value with the sign of the unshifted value.
The SAR and SHR
Instructions can be used to perform signed or unsigned division, respectively, of the destination operand by powers of 2. For example, using the SAR instruction to shift a signed integer 1 bit to the right divides the value by 2.
Using the SAR instruction to perform a division operation does not produce the same result as the IDIV instruction. The quotient from the IDIV instruction is rounded toward zero, whereas the "quotient" of the SAR instruction is rounded toward negative infinity. This difference is apparent