How do we deal with the serial port?

[cdcer]

If I want to give an command outside world through the serail port but do not care the response of it, do I need to poll or detect the event happen in the port? Moreover, for output only, is it true that I only need to open the port and put the output to the port only. But do I need to setup the port, such as the baud rate, the data bits, start, stop bits, and etc.?

Thank you!

 

[fergmj]

Yes, you need to set up the port (baud rate, parity etc) then just open the port, send the string of info out (or the commands) and close the port (if you haven't set it to close after the commands or string was sent).