EEPROM

hasPendingErase()

EEPROM.hasPendingErase, hasPendingErase, performPendingErase

Gen 2 Devices (E-Series, Electron, Photon, and P2; does not include E404X):

Automatic page erase is the default behavior. This section describes optional functions the application can call to manually control page erase for advanced use cases.

After enough data has been written to fill the first page, the EEPROM emulation will write new data to a second page. The first page must be erased before being written again.

Erasing a page of Flash pauses processor execution (including code running in interrupts) for 500ms since no instructions can be fetched from Flash while the Flash controller is busy erasing the EEPROM page. This could cause issues in applications that use EEPROM but rely on precise interrupt timing.

hasPendingErase() lets the application developer check if a full EEPROM page needs to be erased. When the application determines it is safe to pause processor execution to erase EEPROM it calls performPendingErase(). You can call this at boot, or when your device is idle if you expect it to run without rebooting for a long time.

// EXAMPLE USAGE
void setup() {
  // Erase full EEPROM page at boot when necessary
  if(EEPROM.hasPendingErase()) {
    EEPROM.performPendingErase();
  }
}

To estimate how often page erases will be necessary in your application, assume that it takes 2*EEPROM.length() byte writes to fill a page (it will usually be more because not all bytes will always be updated with different values).

If the application never calls performPendingErase() then the pending page erase will be performed when data is written using put() or write() and both pages are full. So calling performPendingErase() is optional and provided to avoid the uncertainty of a potential processor pause any time put() or write() is called.