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Is it a safe assumption, say for x86, that an instruction either does not access memory, or only reads from memory, or writes to memory?

I could not find any instruction but I am not sure if this really is the case.

What about ARM and MIPS?

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    movsb has been in the x86 family since the venerable 8086 and reads and writes memory.
    – Guntram Blohm
    Mar 15, 2016 at 14:19
  • I see. Thanks for the counter example. This means I have to deal with the case.
    – langlauf.io
    Mar 15, 2016 at 14:24
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    You'll also have to deal with all instructions where the combined source/destination operand can be a memory location, starting with the lowly inc [mem] and add [mem], whatever.
    – DarthGizka
    Mar 15, 2016 at 18:12
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    On ARM there only instructions that touch memory is "read from memory to a register" and "write a register to memory, so no.
    – Vitaly Osipov
    Mar 16, 2016 at 0:38
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    In addition to movsb, there's also bts.
    – Jason Geffner
    Mar 17, 2016 at 15:41

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Your question has been answered in comments for x86 - movsb both reads and writes to memory.

On ARM the only instructions that touch memory is "read from memory to a register" and "write a register to memory", so no there aren't. Same with MIPS.

IIRC all (or almost all?) RISC processors are this "load and store" architecture.

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