With real GAS (on Linux), your code assembles to a mov rdx, sign_extended_imm32 like you want.
But yes, clang assembles it to mov rdx, [0xc] unfortunately. That may or may not be a bug, but it's definitely an incompatibility. (MacOS's gcc command is not the GNU Compiler Collection at all, it's Apple Clang: LLVM backend, clang frontend, absolutely nothing to do with the GNU project.)
OFFSET hello_len doesn't seem to work. (I had incorrectly assumed it would on first guess, but clang doesn't support the OFFSET operator; it's .intel_syntax is not fully usable.)
This is clang bug has already been reported. See also Why does this simple assembly program work in AT&T syntax but not Intel syntax?
Clang can't even assemble its own .intel_syntax noprefix output.
There may not be a way to get clang Intel syntax to use a symbol's value (address) as an immediate.
// hello.c
char hello[] = "abcdef";
char *foo() { return hello; }
clang -S prints mov edi, offset hello which won't assemble with clang's built-in assembler! https://godbolt.org/z/x7vmm4.
$ clang -fno-pie -O1 -S -masm=intel hello.c
$ clang -c hello.s
hello.s:10:18: error: cannot use more than one symbol in memory operand
mov eax, offset hello
^
$ clang --version
clang version 8.0.1 (tags/RELEASE_801/final)
Target: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
...
IMO this is a bug, you should report it on clang's https://bugs.llvm.org
(Linux non-PIE executables can take advantage of static addresses being in the low 32 bits of virtual address space by using mov r32, imm32 instead of RIP-relative LEA. And of course not mov r64, imm64.)
Workarounds: you can't just use the C preprocessor. . - hello is context-sensitive; it has a different value when . is a different position. So a text substitution wouldn't work.
Ugly Workaround: switch to .att_syntax and back:
Switch to .att_syntax and back for mov $hello_len, %edx
Ugly and inefficient workaround: lea
This won't work for 64-bit constants, but you can use lea to put a symbol address into a register.
Unfortunately clang/LLVM always uses a disp32 addressing mode, even for register + small constant, when the small constant is a named symbol. I guess it really is treating it like an address that might have a relocation.
Given this source:
## your .rodata and = or .equ symbol definitions
_main:
mov eax, 0x2000004 # optimized from RAX
mov edi, 1
lea rsi, [rip + hello]
mov edx, hello_len # load
lea edx, [hello_len] # absolute disp32
lea edx, [rdi-1 + hello_len] # reg + disp8 hopefully
# mov esi, offset hello # clang chokes.
# mov rdx, OFFSET FLAT hello_len # clang still chokes
.att_syntax
lea -1+hello_len(%rdi), %edx
lea -1+12(%rdi), %edx
mov $hello_len, %edx
.intel_syntax noprefix
syscall
mov rax, 0x2000001
syscall
clang assembles it to this machine code, as disassembled by objdump -drwC -Mintel. Note that the LEA needs a ModRM + SIB to encode a 32-bit absolute addressing mode in 64-bit code.
0: b8 04 00 00 02 mov eax,0x2000004 # efficient 5-byte mov r32, imm32
5: bf 01 00 00 00 mov edi,0x1
# RIP-relative LEA
a: 48 8d 35 00 00 00 00 lea rsi,[rip+0x0] # 11 <_main+0x11> d: R_X86_64_PC32 .data-0x4
11: 8b 14 25 0c 00 00 00 mov edx,DWORD PTR ds:0xc # the load we didn't want
18: 8d 14 25 0c 00 00 00 lea edx,ds:0xc # LEA from the same [disp32] addressing mode.
1f: 8d 97 0b 00 00 00 lea edx,[rdi+0xb] # [rdi+disp32] addressing mode, missed optimization to disp8
25: 8d 97 0b 00 00 00 lea edx,[rdi+0xb] # AT&T lea -1+hello_len(%rdi), %edx same problem
2b: 8d 57 0b lea edx,[rdi+0xb] # AT&T with lea hard-coded -1+12(%rdi)
2e: ba 0c 00 00 00 mov edx,0xc # AT&T mov $hello_len, %edx
33: 0f 05 syscall
35: 48 c7 c0 01 00 00 02 mov rax,0x2000001 # inefficient mov r64, sign_extended_imm32 from your source
3c: 0f 05 syscall
GAS assembling the same source makes 8d 57 0b lea edx,[rdi+0xb] for the lea edx, [rdi-1 + hello_len] version.
See https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/132981/tips-for-golfing-in-x86-x64-machine-code/132985#132985 - LEA from a known-constant register is a win for code-size with nearby / small constants, and is actually fine for performance. (As long as the known-constant got that way without a dependency on a long chain of calculations).
But as you can see, clang fails to optimize that and still uses a reg+disp32 addressing mode even when the displacement would fit in a disp8. It's still slightly better code-size than [abs disp32] which requires a SIB byte; without a SIB byte that encoding means [RIP + rel32].
