CapinWinky
Member
It should be pointed out that programmers coming from other platforms might think that an Alias is a pointer. It is not a pointer, it is just a define that is replaced by the preprocessor with the actual variable name. Basically Rockwell has chosen to not let you rename the process variables they automatically assign to IO and so have created a mechanism to call them something else while in the editor.
They did some extra steps at some point to store this alias information in a table on the PLC so you can see the alias names when you connect online, even if you don't have the original project files. It's a pretty silly way to do it and you can tell this has completely gotten away from them. They can't figure out a way to make it work with structures (UDTs) and there are other limitations that they haven't found a way around. At some point, they will probably just make Aliases pointers because it would solve all their shortcomings with the system, but for now they are not pointers.
They did some extra steps at some point to store this alias information in a table on the PLC so you can see the alias names when you connect online, even if you don't have the original project files. It's a pretty silly way to do it and you can tell this has completely gotten away from them. They can't figure out a way to make it work with structures (UDTs) and there are other limitations that they haven't found a way around. At some point, they will probably just make Aliases pointers because it would solve all their shortcomings with the system, but for now they are not pointers.