Creating an array of variable size in MIPS Assembly

Question

In MIPS Assembly how would I go about creating a program that would create an array of different size based on user input?

For example, the program would ask the user to input an integer X and create an array of length X.

Any code examples would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

You can use the sbrk system call to allocate memory.

Consider the following:

.data
    prompt: .asciiz "Number of integers "
.text

    main:
        #print prompt
        la $a0 prompt
        li $v0 4
        syscall

        #get int
        li $v0 5
        syscall

        #allocate space
        sll $a0 $v0 2 #number of bytes now in $a0
        li  $v0 9
        syscall 

        #address of space now in $v0