Bit-Addressable Objects

Bit-addressable objects are objects which can be addressed as bytes or as bits. Only data objects that occupy the bit-addressable area of the 8051 internal memory fall into this category. The C51 compiler places variables declared with the bdata memory type into this bit-addressable area. You may declare these variables as shown below:

int bdata ibase;	/* Bit-addressable int */

char bdata bary [4];	/* Bit-addressable array */

The variables ibase  and bary  are bit-addressable. Therefore, the individual bits of these variables may be directly accessed and modified. To do this, use the sbit keyword to declare new variables that access the bits of variables declared using bdata. For example:

sbit mybit0 = ibase ^ 0;	/* bit 0 of ibase */
sbit mybit15 = ibase ^ 15;	/* bit 15 of ibase */

sbit Ary07 = bary[0] ^ 7;	/* bit 7 of bary[0] */
sbit Ary37 = bary[3] ^ 7;	/* bit 7 of bary[3] */

The above example represents declarations, not assignments to the bits of the ibase  and bary  variables declared above. The expression following the carat symbol (^) in the example, specifies the position of the bit to access with this declaration. This expression must be a constant value. The range depends on the type of the base variable included in the declaration. The range is 0 to 7 for char and unsigned char, 0 to 15 for int, unsigned int, short, and unsigned short, and 0 to 31 for long and unsigned long.

You may provide external variable declarations for the sbit type to access these types in other modules. For example:

extern bit mybit0;	/* bit 0 of ibase */
extern bit mybit15	/* bit 15 of ibase */

extern bit Ary07;	/* bit 7 of bary[0] */
extern bit Ary37;	/* bit 7 of bary[3] */

Declarations involving the sbit type require that the base object be declared with the memory type bdata. The only exception to this are the variants for special function bits as discussed in the section entitled “Special Function Registers” later in this chapter.

The following example shows how to change the bits of ibase  and bary  using the above declarations.

Ary37 = 0;	/* clear bit 7 in bary[3] */
bary[3] = 'a';	/* Byte addressing */
ibase = -1;	/* Word addressing */
mybit15 = 1;	/* set bit 15 ibase */ 

The bdata memory type is handled like the data memory type except that variables declared with bdata reside in the bit-addressable portion of the internal data memory. Note that the total size of this area of memory may not exceed 16 bytes.

In addition to declaring sbit variables for scalar types, you may also declare sbit variables for structures and unions. For example:

union lft
  {
  float mf;
  long ml;
  };

bdata struct bad
  {
  char m1;
  union lft u;
  } tcp;

sbit tcpf31 = tcp.u.ml ^ 31;	/* bit 31 of float */
sbit tcpm10 = tcp.m1 ^ 0;
sbit tcpm17 = tcp.m1 ^ 7;

NOTES
You may not specify bit variables for the bit positions of a float.  However, you may include the float and a long in a union.  Then, you may declare bit variables to access the bits in the long type.

The sbit data type uses the specified variable as a base address and adds the bit position to obtain a physical bit address. Physical bit addresses are not equivalent to logical bit positions for certain data types. Physical bit position 0 refers to bit position 0 of the first byte. Physical bit position 8 refers to bit position 0 of the second byte. Since int variables are stored high-byte first, bit 0 of the integer is located in bit position 0 of the second byte. This is physical bit position 8 when accessed using an sbit data type.