9.5.3.1 FSR Registers and the INDF Operand

At the core of Indirect Addressing are three sets of registers: FSR0, FSR1 and FSR2. Each represent a pair of 8-bit registers, FSRnH and FSRnL. Each FSR pair holds the full address of the RAM location. The FSR value can address the entire range of the data memory in a linear fashion. The FSR register pairs, then, serve as pointers to data memory locations.

Indirect Addressing is accomplished with a set of Indirect File Operands, INDF0 through INDF2. These can be thought of as “virtual” registers; they are mapped in the SFR space but are not physically implemented. Reading or writing to a particular INDF register actually accesses its corresponding FSR register pair. A read from INDF1, for example, reads the data at the address indicated by FSR1H:FSR1L. Instructions that use the INDF registers as operands actually use the contents of their corresponding FSR as a pointer to the instruction’s target. The INDF operand is just a convenient way of using the pointer.

Because Indirect Addressing uses a full address, the FSR value can target any location in any bank regardless of the BSR value. However, the Access RAM bit must be cleared to zero to ensure that the INDF register in Access space is the object of the operation instead of a register in one of the other banks. The assembler default value for the Access RAM bit is zero when targeting any of the indirect operands.