Tell if interrupts are enabled

Question

Is there a way of telling if sei()/interrupts() or cli()/noInterrupts() was last called?

I need this to be able to enable interrupts, execute some code and set interrupts disable interrupts if they where disabled.

Here is some sample code:

void function_requiring_interrupts(void) {
    bool interruptsEnabled = getInterrupsState(); // what function / variable here?

    interrupts();

    // Code requiring interrups are enabled

    if(!interruptsEnabled) {
        noInterrupts();
    }
}

Answer 1

One way of doing this is to save, and then later restore the SREG status register, thus saving and later restoring the interrupt status to whatever it was, thus:

  uint8_t oldSREG = SREG; // Save the status
  cli();

  // Do stuff, as little as possible.

  SREG = oldSREG;

Also, the rationale described in the question has inherent problems: If some other code already had interrupts disabled, and your code enables interrupts, data corruption or program failure could occur. Any "interrupt-disabled" block of code would be expecting all registers and memory / variables to remain untainted, while enabling interrupts can cause that to change.

Therefore the reverse logic, as in the code fragment above, is best practice: Explicitly disable interrupts for your own code as needed, but restore interrupts as soon as possible, then proceed with the rest of your processing.