7.2.3.11 Break Hexmate Option

The -break option ensures that the byte of data at a particular address is placed at the beginning of a data record.

This option takes a comma-separated list of unqualified hexadecimal addresses, whose interpretation is based on the addressing value (see 7.2.3.10 Addressing Hexmate Option). If data would ordinarily be written to a record whose address range crossed any of these listed addresses, this option will limit that record to data up to but excluding the relevant address, and a new data record will be output for the subsequent data.

For example, if Hexmate would normally output data in records that specify addresses 0 through to 0x2F, such as:

:100000000EEF0AF03412ADDEADDEADDEADDEADDEFC
:10001000ADDEADDEADDEADDEADDEADDEADDEADDE88
:10002000ADDEADDEADDEADDEADDEADDEADDEADDE78
...

then using the -break=16 option and an addressing value of 1 will change the output to:

:100000000EEF0AF03412ADDEADDEADDEADDEADDEFC
:06001000ADDEADDEADDE49
:10001600ADDEADDEADDEADDEADDEADDEADDEADDE82
:10002600ADDEADDEADDEADDEADDEADDEADDEADDE72
...

Here, the second record only specifies data up to address 15 and data in the following record begins at address 16.

Breaking data records can create a distinction between functionally different areas of the program space. Some HEX file readers depend on records being arranged this way.