PiCPro Time and Date Stamp

This article refers to G&L PiC application note document AN000001 and describes how the PiC900 time/date stamp on an .LDO file works.

​The time/date stamp for an .LDO is embedded within the .LDO, and is not necessarily the same as the DOS time/date stamp on the .LDO file.

Whenever the F10 key is hit from within a network, or if declarations are modified in any way, the time/date stamp of the .LDO opened in PiCPro is zeroed, and the LDO modified flag is set. 

When a module save is performed, the LDO modified flag is reset, but the time/date in the .LDO is not changed. 

When you perform a module download, if the time/date stamp of the .LDO is zero, the LDO modified flag is set.  The new time and date stamp is then recorded at the end of the download.  This is why PiCPro asks you to save after downloading, even though you may have saved before downloading.

In addition to hitting F10, or changing declarations, PiCPro will automatically ask you to save if the .LDO was in a format that is not the same as the format PiCPro is using.  This occurs, for example, when you open an .LDO with version 7 that was last saved with version 6. 

Also, when downloading PiCPro builds a table of time/date stamps for all functions used in the application program (UDFBs included) in the memory of the PiC.  If this table is modified from what it was on the previous download, then PiCPro will set the .LDO modified flag as well, and you will be prompted to save.  This would occur if a UDFB had a different time/date stamp than on the last download, but the main .LDO were unchanged.