Question

I have MPLab V8.43 installed and just installed the C18 complier for programming.
Whenever I try and build a small test code it halts at the first variable declaration. It says there is a syntax.

unsigned char counter;

doesn’t look wrong to me…even did it as unsigned char counter[1]; and it still tossed a syntax error back at me.
What gives? Any ideas?

Answer 1

Local variables must be declared at the top of a block (in this case, a function.) This is according to the C89 standard.

These are acceptable:

void functionname(void)
{
    unsigned char counter;

    /* rest of code */
}

void functionname(void)
{
    /* code */

    for (unsigned char counter = 0; counter<30; counter++)
    {
    }

}

This is not acceptable:

void functionname(void)
{
    /* code */

    unsigned char counter = 0; 

    /* more code */

}