A question for the Macro experts....

[mister_e]

Hehe, i agree.

Just a question. Is there any possible problem by using

wData   var word SYSTEM

against

wData   var word

[Darrel Taylor]

Well, can't say for sure, but I've never had any problems with SYSTEM.

PBP tries to protect against duplicate variable names by adding an underscore "_" in front of everything that's specified by the user.

The only thing that "SYSTEM" does, is prevent that underscore from being added.

It could cause a Naming Conflict with other things being used at the ASM level, but when that happens, the compiler will let you know.

It does make things look nicer without all those _'s.   But then, those _'s can make it easier to differentiate between what's PBP and what's ASM variables, when it's debugging time.

It's hard to say which way is better.
<br>

[forgie]

Thanks guys, that's exactly what I needed, and it works great. Now to make things more tricky..... the data I'm sending out is in an array, and I normally use this macro inside a for loop that's cycling through the array.

The old code:
<code>
For Sample = 0 to (N_SAMPLES - 1)
Hserout [Sample_Array[Sample] / 100, Sample_Array[Sample] // 100]
Next
</code>


For obvious reasons, I can't just write:
<code>
@ Transmit _Sample_Array[_Sample]
</code>

I will rewrite the macro to so that the argument is the Index of the Sample_Array array, so the macro will be dedicated to using that one array, like such:
<code>
@ Transmit _Sample
</code>

I'll post my macro when I've finished writing it, but just for discussions sake, is there some easy way to call a member of an array using a macro? I could use something like:
<code>
Addr = Sample_Array + (2 * Sample)
@ Transmit _Addr
</code>
To do the same thing, right? This doesn't help much since my aim is to improve readability here.

I guess I could use a macro that takes a word array and an index as arguments:
<code>
@ TX_Array _Sample_Array, _Sample
</code>

Hmmm. I seem to be answering my own questions by writing it down. Macros now seem much more useful. How would I write the above macro, but have it be able to take Word and Byte arrays? In other words, how do you use If statements in macros?

Thanks guys,
forgie

[forgie]

Oh and, how do you post code like you guys do? I have been using < code>.... whats the tag to put it in a nice little grey box?

[Luciano]

BBCode:

http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/faq.php?mode=bbcode

Luciano

[forgie]

Thanks, Luciano
My macro now looks like thus:

TXArray	var Sample_Array
TXIndex	var word SYSTEM
TXData	var word SYSTEM
@TX_Sample macro index
	@ MOVE?WW index, TXIndex
	TXData = TXArray[TXIndex]
	Hserout [TXData / 100, TXData // 100]
	@ endm

(Sample_Array is a word array that I'm using to store my data in).

This works great, and I can call it like this:

	@ TX_Sample _Sample

Thanks for the pointers, fellow PBPers. The only thing I couldn't do was get it to take both the array and the index as arguments.... I have to nut out the whole memory addressing thing in my head before I can get it to work.

[mister_e]

Good job guy. i just want to remind you something. Every time a macro is called, that duplicate his whole code. so, by using the following

asm
TX_Sample macro index
	MOVE?WW index, TXIndex
    L?CALL TXnow
	endm
TXnow
    ENDASM
	TXData = TXArray[TXIndex]
	Hserout [TXData / 100, TXData // 100]
    RETURN

this will generate less code everytime you call the macro.

Here's another method to send a specific index of Word array var.

DEFINE LOADER_USED 1
DEFINE OSC 20
DEFINE HSER_RCSTA 90h
DEFINE HSER_TXSTA 24h
DEFINE HSER_SPBRG 129 ' 9600 Bauds

TXData  var WORD SYSTEM   
aVar    var word[4] SYSTEM

avar[0]=0
avar[1]=100
avar[2]=1000
avar[3]=10000
goto start

asm
Usend macro index
	MOVE?WW aVar + (index*2) , TXData
    L?CALL TXnow
	endm
TXnow
    ENDASM
	Hserout [dec TXData,13,10]
    RETURN
start:
      @ Usend 0
      @ Usend 1
      @ Usend 2
      @ Usend 3
      pause 500
      goto start

there's probably tons of way like using AOUT?xxx macro too.. well still unsure of that one AOUT?xxx