GENERAL: DEFINING A STRING ON THE COMPILER COMMAND LINE

Information in this article applies to:

• C51 All Versions
• C166 All Versions
• C251 All Versions

SYMPTOM

Can I use the DEFINE command line option to pass a string to my program at compile time?

CAUSE

Though you can't pass a complete string using the DEFINE option, you can pass individual characters.

RESOLUTION

If you want define a string, you need to break it up into individual characters, as shown below.

C51 define(VERSION="'V','e','r','s','i','o','n',' ','1','.','0','b','e','t','a'")

The symbol VERSION can then be used in your C code as follows,

#ifdef VERSION
  char VersionString[] = VERSION,0;
#else
  char VersionString[] = "No Version Information";
#endif

MORE INFORMATIO

• Cx51 User's Guide: DEFINE Compiler Directive
• C51: SUPPORT FOR -I AND -D MAKEFILE COMMANDS

SEE ALSO

• C51: __DATE__ AND __TIME__ MACROS
• µVision DEBUGGER: DATE AND TIME OF TARGET ROUTINES
• C51: WARNING 317 (MACRO 'NAME': INVALID REDEFINITION)

Last Reviewed: Wednesday, February 28, 2018