This does not mean, however, that serial port programming is no longer a necessary or relevant skill to posses.
Keywords: Serial Port, Programming, Linux, Windows 1 Introduction The advent of USB has caused a significant decline in the number of devices that communicate using RS 232, and many motherboards today ship without serial ports.
In this document the functions and steps necessary to use the serial port are detailed, and at the end of this document an example cross-platform header file is provided.
MAKE THE CUT 4 1 0 SERIAL PORT PORTABLE
This creates a cross-platform serial interface allowing the creation of code that is more easily portable across operating systems. The actual application can then use the common header file as its interface to the serial port. With a single header file that contains all the functions necessary to communicate over a serial port, the implementation details can remain platform dependent as a library that can then be compiled and maintained separately for each operating system. It is possible then to create an API that contains the functions necessary to successfully communicate with the serial port. These steps are opening the port, configuring the port, reading and writing to the port, and finally, closing the port. Serial port programming, at its most basic level, consists of a series of steps regardless of the operating system that one is operating on. 1 Serial Port Programming in Windows and Linux Maxwell Walter NovemAbstract While devices that use RS 232 and the serial port to communicate are becoming increasingly rare, it is still an important skill to have.