Alien (PL/M-51) Function

The C251 Compiler easily interfaces with the Intel PL/M-51 Compiler and allows you to:

• Call PL/M-51 routines from C.
• Call C routines from PL/M-51.

To invoke PL/M-51 routines from your C functions, you must first declare them external with the alien function type specifier. For example:

extern alien char plm_func (int, char);

char c_func (void)  {
  int i;
  char c;

  for (i = 0; i < 100; i++) {
    c = plm_func (i, c);          /* call PL/M func */
  }
  return (c);
}

To create C functions that may be invoked from your PL/M-51 routines, you must use the alien function type specifier in the C function declaration. For example:

alien char c_func (char a,  int b)  {
  return (a * b);
}

Parameters and return values of PL/M-51 functions may be bit, char, unsigned char, int, and unsigned int. Other types, including long, float, and all types of pointers, can be declared in C functions with the alien type specifier. However, use these types with care because PL/M-51 does not directly support 32-bit binary integers or floating-point numbers.

Public variables declared in the PL/M-51 module are available to your C programs by declaring them external like you would for any C variable.