15.8.3 Receive Compete Flag and Interrupt

The USART Receiver has one flag that indicates the Receiver state.

The Receive Complete (RXC) Flag indicates if there are unread data present in the receive buffer. This flag is one when unread data exist in the receive buffer, and zero when the receive buffer is empty (i.e., does not contain any unread data). If the Receiver is disabled (RXEN = 0), the receive buffer will be flushed and consequently the RXCn bit will become zero.

When the Receive Complete Interrupt Enable (RXCIE) in UCSRnB is set, the USART Receive Complete interrupt will be executed as long as the RXC Flag is set (provided that global interrupts are enabled). When interrupt-driven data reception is used, the receive complete routine must read the received data from UDR in order to clear the RXC Flag, otherwise a new interrupt will occur once the interrupt routine terminates.