Old New Thing
Coverage of Old New Thing in the Nexus archive.
- The time the x86 emulator team found code so bad they fixed it during emulation
The x86 emulator team at Microsoft discovered problematic code during emulation and decided to fix it directly within the emulation process. The incident was documented on the Old New Thing blog, highlighting technical challenges in software emulation.
- Why are there both TMP and TEMP environment variables, and which one is right?
The article explains the existence of both TMP and TEMP environment variables in Windows, clarifying their historical origins and intended use cases. It discusses how TMP is the preferred variable for modern applications, while TEMP is retained for backward compatibility.
- XOR'ing a register with itself is the idiom for zeroing it out. Why not sub?
The article explains that in assembly programming, XOR'ing a register with itself is a common idiom to zero it out, and discusses why subtraction is not used for the same purpose. It references a Microsoft blog post and Hacker News comments for context.