C Volatile Keyword Explained

In the C language, the volatile keyword is used to inform the compiler that variables decorated with it may be unexpectedly modified during the program’s execution. Therefore, the compiler should avoid optimizing operations on these variables, meaning each time these variables are accessed, they should be read from memory rather than from registers. This ensures that the program will not exhibit unexpected behavior in situations such as multi-threading or interrupt handling. The volatile keyword is typically used to decorate hardware registers, variables shared between threads, or variables in interrupt handling functions.