Edition Support

Some IEC 61131-3 features require enabling a specific edition of the standard. See Enabling Dialects and Features for how to enable an edition in the compiler or VS Code extension.

Edition 3 (2013) Features

Edition 3 introduced the following features, which require --dialect iec61131-3-ed3 (CLI) or ironplc.dialect: iec61131-3-ed3 (VS Code).

Feature	Category	Description
LTIME	Data type	64-bit duration
LDATE	Data type	64-bit calendar date
LTIME_OF_DAY	Data type	64-bit time of day
LDATE_AND_TIME	Data type	64-bit date and time of day
REF_TO	Data type	Reference (pointer) to a variable
REF()	Operator	Create a reference to a variable
^	Operator	Dereference a reference
NULL	Literal	Null reference value
.%Xn, .%Bn, .%Wn, .%Dn, .%Ln	Partial access	Select a bit (equivalent to the .n short form), byte, word, double word, or long word of a wider value
EXTENDS	Object orientation	Derive a function block type or interface from a base type
IMPLEMENTS	Object orientation	Declare that a function block type provides one or more interfaces
ABSTRACT	Object orientation	Mark a function block type as not directly instantiable
INTERFACE	Object orientation	Declare an interface — a named set of method signatures
METHOD	Object orientation	Declare a method on a function block type
THIS and SUPER	Object orientation	Name the instance a method runs on, or that instance seen as its base type
Explicit enumeration values	Data type	Give an enumeration member its own value instead of the one its declaration order implies

Edition 2 (2003) Features

All other supported features use the default Edition 2 and require no additional flags. See Language Reference for the complete language reference.