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

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.