In a computer that allows indirect addressing, the assembly language programmer typically indicates an indirect address by adding a character such as * to the absolute or symbolic address, or by enclosing it in parentheses.
A class of ADDRESSING MODES supported by most processors in which an INSTRUCTION contains not the address of its OPERAND, but the address of another location that contains the address of the operand, called the ‘effective address’. In REGISTER INDIRECT addressing it is a REGISTER that contains the effective address. Indirect addresses are indicated in many ASSEMBLY LANGUAGES by writing the operand in parentheses, for example: MOV B, (A) writes the contents of register B to the location pointed to by the address in register A.
Indirect addressing instructions may also include a PRE-INCREMENT or POST-INCREMENT (or DECREMENT) feature that allows the operand address to be automatically increased or decreased after each access; this simplifies ‘walking’ through the items in an ARRAY.
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