After an object has been compiled, the Propeller Tool displays context-sensitive compile information on the status bar (panel 5) about the source item the cursor is currently near or within. This is very useful in verifying and understanding the values of constants declared in an object. For example, compile this example by pressing F9 (or selecting the Run → Compile Current → Update Status menu option) and then place the cursor on the iB constant in the CON block. The status bar will temporarily highlight the context information and should look similar to the figure below.
Status Bar with Compile Information
After a compile operation, the status bar’s panel 5 displays information about the source item nearest the cursor.
This tells us that our iB constant is defined by the CON block to be 760 decimal, or $2F8 hexadecimal.
Try placing the cursor on the B constant. The compile information should now read “CON B = 7.6 ($40F3_3333) Floating Point” to indicate this is a real number, in floating-point form, equal to 7.6 decimal ($40F3_3333 hexadecimal) This illustrates that floating-point values are encoded into 32 bits in a way that makes them incompatible with integer values.
In addition to symbols in CON and DAT blocks, the compile information displays shows the size, in bytes, of PUB/PRI/DAT blocks when the cursor is within that block. In our case, the Math method is 196 bytes long. This is a great feature to use when optimizing code for size; make small changes to code, press F9, check size against that of the previous code, and so on.
Propeller Help Version 1.1
Copyright © Parallax Inc.
5/13/2009