title: Can I use movl instead of movb or movw in Assembly on modern systems?
body: <p>I am learning how to program in Assembly and I have a clarification question.  In my book, it makes quite the deal out of the importance of using the correct suffix in conjunction with the command.  However, in class the teacher has only used the 'movl' operand.   Is my teacher doing this for simplicity or have the 'movb' and 'movw' commands become obsolete in recent years?  Is efficiency lost when using movl as opposed to movb on a char type for example?  Will it even work?
  Thanks</p>
  
  <p>update: I am talking about x86-64 assembly</p>