RE: [sv-bc] dotted names and interfaces

My understanding is that an interface port is indeed a reference to a hierarchical reference, the same as a virtual interface reference. See the end of 25.3

The LRM make a specific exception for references to types via interface ports, but does not consider that an actual interface connection could be a hierarchical reference. Mantis 632 was supposed to address this, but did not go far enough.

Dave
Mentor Graphics

From: owner-sv-bc@eda.org [mailto:owner-sv-bc@eda.org] On Behalf Of Daniel Mlynek
Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2013 4:33 AM
To: sv-bc@eda.org
Subject: [sv-bc] dotted names and interfaces

LRM:
"A hierarchical name and a member select into a structure, union, class or covergroup object share the same syntactic form of a sequence of name components separated by periods. Such names are called dotted names"
and later:
"The distinguishing aspect of a hierarchical name is that the first component of the name must match a scope name while the first name component of a member select must match a variable name."

I cannot find in LRM exact definition of what is the scope. I've found definition like this : "scope_nameis either a subroutine name, a module, program, or interface instance name or a generate block name." but it is not full

There is at least 2 more constructs which share dotted name syntax - which  are not explicitly mentioned above
 - reference to interface port item  module uut(interface ip) initial ip.m=1; // what is ip.m???
 - reference to virtual interface items
Assuming that those are not listed in a member select part of definition - both of those should be treated as hierarchical references with all consequences?
IMHO 2nd  rather should be treated as member select as virtual interface it self varaible so text could be changed:
"A hierarchical name and a member select into a structure, union, class, virtual interface or covergroup object share the same syntactic form of a sequence of name components separated by periods. Such names are called dotted names"

But I'm not sure what about ref to interface port items - those are not member selects for sure - but are they hierarchical references?
You can reference to a type by interface port and you cannot do this by hier reference. What about indexing with non constant select on arrays of intances which are disallowed for hier refs are those also illegal for interface port arrays?

DANiel




--
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner<http://www.mailscanner.info/>, and is
believed to be clean.

-- 
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.