Breaking down serial.XXXXXX code

Using Arduino Programming Questions
#1

I want to get a detailed understanding of the serial.available command below.

if (false) {
while(Serial.available() == 0)
;
lstate = state = 0;
}

Most of my code experience is with C and working at the level of configuring the registers and reading data bytes right out of the UART. I have been trying to 'unwrap' serial.available to get a better understanding of how my Leonardo gets each data byte from the GPS (LEA-6) sensor. I found someone who wrote some arduino code to read and display the sensor data as it comes from my GPS. I was hoping I could follow this enough to allow me to write my own code from scratch so I could re-write the code on an ATMEGA 32. I realize the golden rule of programming is not to reinvent the wheel, but I want to understand what is going on. Any ideas?

Sincerely
Russ

#2

I want to get a detailed understanding of the serial.available command below.

The statement says "while there is no serial data to read, do ;". Since ; is nothing, the statement simply blocks until there is serial data to read.

#3

Well no, it never gets run because of the “if (false)”…

The code for Serial.available is there for you to look at, in HardwareSerial.cpp,
but its full of conditional compilation for various different ATmega chips. If you
don’t know where the source code is in your system you should take time to find
it (once you find the install its mainly in <installdir>/hardware/arduino/cores/arduino/...)

#4