Serial source code

Question

Serial is documented on the Reference pages, but seems to receive special treatment (no need to include header), and there does not seem to be any file with the Source code.

Stream is the base class for Serial and inherits from the Print class.

There is source for Stream.h

LiquidCrystal_I2C also inherits from the Print class, and I was planning to write code which outputs to either LiquidCrystal_I2C or Serial; there are many options, but I was looking for Serial to explore its inner workings.

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 17 '17 at 10:34

Serial is an instance of the HardwareSerial class. It is defined in HardwareSerial0.cpp:

#if defined(UBRRH) && defined(UBRRL)
  HardwareSerial Serial(&UBRRH, &UBRRL, &UCSRA, &UCSRB, &UCSRC, &UDR);
#else
  HardwareSerial Serial(&UBRR0H, &UBRR0L, &UCSR0A, &UCSR0B, &UCSR0C, &UDR0);
#endif

HardwareSerial is a child of Stream as defined in HardwareSerial.h:

class HardwareSerial : public Stream
{
    ....
};

Stream is a child of Print as defined in Stream.h:

class Stream : public Print
{
    ....
};

Print is a top-level class with no inheritance.

Serial is not a class. It is an instance of a class. That is, it's an object that has been constructed from the class definition. Anything you access member functions of using a . is an instance of a class (aka an object) not a class itself. Anything you access member functions with :: is a class using static member functions.

Examples:

Serial.println(); // Call the println() function in the Serial object
Wire.beginTransmission(0x34); // Call the beginTransmission function in the Wire object
Foo::bar(); // Call the static function bar() in the Foo class.

Serial source code

1 Answers1