What does the "rep stos" x86 assembly instruction sequence do?

For ecx repetitions, stores the contents of eax into where edi points to, incrementing or decrementing edi (depending on the direction flag) by 4 bytes each time. Normally, this is used for a memset-type operation.

Usually, that instruction is simply written rep stosd. Experienced assembly coders know all the details mentioned above just by seeing that. :-)

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ETA for completeness (thanks PhiS): Each iteration, ecx is decremented by 1, and the loop stops when it reaches zero. For stos, the only thing you will observe is that ecx is cleared at the end. But, for scas or the like, where the repz/repnz prefixes are used, ecx can be greater than zero if the operation stopped before exhausting ecx bytes/words/whatevers.

Before you ask, scas is used for implementing strchr-type operations. :-P