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enum external declaration and use

Hi Folks,
I am trying to use enum to define a set of named constants with values so that they can be used by multiple C files in my project. For example. I use the following snipet to define Months in a headers file externals.h, and then If I then try to use it as follows in any of those files, it does not work.

 enum MONTHS {M1 = 'Jan', M2 = 'Feb', M3 = 'Mar'};
....
....
extern enum MONTHS; // should it be extern enum MONTHS months; ?
....
.....
SendByte (M1);//(This routine display M1 on my serial port).

I get error ---> (...error 230 MONTH unknown struct/union/enum tag)

What is the problem and how can I fix it ?
I would like to get a better understanding of this enum business, if possible..

Thanks.

Bhal Tulpule

Parents
  • ya, the above methods are the widely known method.

    const char *p = (const char*)&var3;
    printf("first byte: %02x, second byte: %02x.\n",p[0],p[1]);

    This can be used as a new way around of doing it. also the var3 can be a 4byte long int for more options.

    ...it could be little-endian for 16-bit sub-groups but big-endian betwen the two 16-bit sub-groups.
    

    do controller have such architectures?
    May be 16bit controllers?

Reply
  • ya, the above methods are the widely known method.

    const char *p = (const char*)&var3;
    printf("first byte: %02x, second byte: %02x.\n",p[0],p[1]);

    This can be used as a new way around of doing it. also the var3 can be a 4byte long int for more options.

    ...it could be little-endian for 16-bit sub-groups but big-endian betwen the two 16-bit sub-groups.
    

    do controller have such architectures?
    May be 16bit controllers?

Children
  • A controller must obviously work with a word size larger than two bytes, to be able to be partially big-endian and partially little-endian.

    The most common is a 16-bit controller that are big or little endian for the native word size. But have dedicated instructions that allows two 16-bit registers to be saved/loaded as one 32-bit value. Like when 16'16 multiply produces a 32-bit result or 32/16 produces a 16-bit result. In that case, the instruction set may write the two registers in the wrong order.

    Similar issues is of course possible when looking at 64-bit processors, or 32-bit processors with partial 64-bit support.

  • "...to be able to be partially big-endian and partially little-endian"

    Or it could be implemented in software by the compiler