Programming 8-bit PIC Microcontrollers in C

2.2. PIC16 C Program Basics

• Variables

• Looping

• Decisions

The purpose of an embedded program is to read in data or control inputs, process them, and operate the outputs as required. Input from parallel, serial, and analog ports are held in the file registers for temporary storage and processing; and the results are output later on, as data or a signal. The program for processing the data usually contains repetitive loops and conditional branching, which depends on an input or calculated value.

Variables

Most programs need to process data in some way, and named variables are needed to hold their values. A variable name is a label attached to the memory location where the variable value is stored. When working in assembly language, a register label ...