The Cortex-M4 Instruction Set
ARM DUI 0553A
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3-19
ID121610
Non-Confidential
The condition flags
The APSR contains the following condition flags:
N
Set to 1 when the result of the operation was negative, cleared to 0 otherwise.
Z
Set to 1 when the result of the operation was zero, cleared to 0 otherwise.
C
Set to 1 when the operation resulted in a carry, cleared to 0 otherwise.
V
Set to 1 when the operation caused overflow, cleared to 0 otherwise.
For more information about the APSR see
.
A carry occurs:
•
if the result of an addition is greater than or equal to 2
32
•
if the result of a subtraction is positive or zero
•
as the result of an inline barrel shifter operation in a move or logical instruction.
Overflow occurs when the sign of the result, in bit[31], does not match the sign of the result had
the operation been performed at infinite precision, for example:
•
if adding two negative values results in a positive value
•
if adding two positive values results in a negative value
•
if subtracting a positive value from a negative value generates a positive value
•
if subtracting a negative value from a positive value generates a negative value.
The Compare operations are identical to subtracting, for
CMP
, or adding, for
CMN
, except that the
result is discarded. See the instruction descriptions for more information.
Note
Most instructions update the status flags only if the S suffix is specified. See the instruction
descriptions for more information.
Condition code suffixes
The instructions that can be conditional have an optional condition code, shown in syntax
descriptions as
{
cond
}
. Conditional execution requires a preceding
IT
instruction. An instruction
with a condition code is only executed if the condition code flags in the APSR meet the specified
condition.
shows the condition codes to use.
You can use conditional execution with the
IT
instruction to reduce the number of branch
instructions in code.
also shows the relationship between condition code suffixes and the N, Z, C, and V
flags.
Table 3-4 Condition code suffixes
Suffix
Flags
Meaning
EQ
Z = 1
Equal
NE
Z = 0
Not equal
CS or HS
C = 1
Higher or same, unsigned
CC or LO
C = 0
Lower, unsigned
MI
N = 1
Negative
PL
N = 0
Positive or zero