Lexical conventions in Verilog are similar to C in the sense that it contains a stream of tokens. A lexical token may consist of one or more characters and tokens can be comments, keywords, numbers, strings or white space. All lines should be terminated by a semi-colon ;.
Verilog is case-sensitive, so var_a and var_A are different.
Comments
There are two ways to write comments in Verilog.
- A single line comment starts with
//and tells Verilog compiler to treat everything after this point to the end of the line as a comment. - A multiple-line comment starts with
/*and ends with*/and cannot be nested.
However, single line comments can be nested in a multiple line comment.
// This is a single line comment
integer a; // Creates an int variable called a, and treats everything to the right of // as a comment
/*
This is a
multiple-line or
block comment
*/
/* This is /*
an invalid nested
block comment */
*/
/* However,
// this one is okay
*/
// This is also okay
///////////// Still okay
Whitespace
White space is a term used to represent the characters for spaces, tabs, newlines and formfeeds, and is usually ignored by Verilog except when it separates tokens. In fact, this helps in the indentation of code to make it easier to read.
module dut; // 'module' is a keyword,
// 'dut' is an identifier
reg [8*6:1] name = "Hello!"; // The 2 spaces in the beginning are ignored
However blanks(spaces) and tabs (from TAB key) are not ignored in strings. In the example below, the string variable called addr gets the value "Earth " because of preservation of spaces in strings.
// There is no space in the beginning of this line,
// but there's a space in the string
reg [8*6:1] addr = "Earth ";
endmodule
Operators
There are three types of operators: unary, binary, and ternary or conditional.
- Unary operators shall appear to the left of their operand
- Binary operators shall appear between their operands
- Conditional operators have two separate operators that separate three operands
x = ~y; // ~ is a unary operator, and y is the operand
x = y | z; // | is a binary operator, where y and z are its operands
x = (y > 5) ? w : z; // ?: is a ternary operator, and the expression (y>5), w and z are its operands
If the expression (y > 5) is true, then variable x will get the value in w, else the value in z.
Number Format
We are most familiar with numbers being represented as decimals. However, numbers can also be represented in binary, octal and hexadecimal. By default, Verilog simulators treat numbers as decimals. In order to represent them in a different radix, certain rules have to be followed.
16 // Number 16 in decimal 0x10 // Number 16 in hexadecimal 10000 // Number 16 in binary 20 // Number 16 in octal
Sized
Sized numbers are represented as shown below, where size is written only in decimal to specify the number of bits in the number.
[size]'[base_format][number]
- base_format can be either decimal ('d or 'D), hexadecimal ('h or 'H) and octal ('o or 'O) and specifies what base the number part represents.
- number is specified as consecutive digits from 0, 1, 2 ... 9 for decimal base format and 0, 1, 2 .. 9, A, B, C, D, E, F for hexadecimal.
3'b010; // size is 3, base format is binary ('b), and the number is 010 (indicates value 2 in binary)
3'd2; // size is 3, base format is decimal ('d) and the number is 2 (specified in decimals)
8'h70; // size is 8, base format is hexadecimal ('h) and the number is 0x70 (in hex) to represent decimal 112
9'h1FA; // size is 9, base format is hexadecimal ('h) and the number is 0x1FA (in hex) to represent decimal 506
4'hA = 4'd10 = 4'b1010 = 4'o12 // Decimal 10 can be represented in any of the four formats
8'd234 = 8'D234 // Legal to use either lower case or upper case for base format
32'hFACE_47B2; // Underscore (_) can be used to separate 16 bit numbers for readability
Uppercase letters are legal for number specification when the base format is hexadecimal.
16'hcafe; // lowercase letters Valid 16'hCAFE; // uppercase letters Valid 32'h1D40_CAFE; // underscore can be used as separator between 4 letters Valid
Unsized
Numbers without a base_format specification are decimal numbers by default. Numbers without a size specification have a default number of bits depending on the type of simulator and machine.
integer a = 5423; // base format is not specified, a gets a decimal value of 5423
integer a = 'h1AD7; // size is not specified, because a is int (32 bits) value stored in a = 32'h0000_1AD7
Negative
Negative numbers are specified by placing a minus - sign before the size of a number. It is illegal to have a minus sign between base_format and number.
-6'd3; // 8-bit negative number stored as two's complement of 3
-6'sd9; // For signed maths
8'd-4; // Illegal
Strings
A sequence of characters enclosed in a double quote " " is called a string. It cannot be split into multiple lines and every character in the string take 1-byte to be stored.
"Hello World!" // String with 12 characters -> require 12 bytes
"x + z" // String with 5 characters
"How are you
feeling today ?" // Illegal for a string to be split into multiple lines
Identifiers
Identifiers are names of variables so that they can be referenced later on. They are made up of alphanumeric characters [a-z][A-Z][0-9], underscores _ or dollar sign $ and are case sensitive. They cannot start with a digit or a dollar sign.
integer var_a; // Identifier contains alphabets and underscore -> Valid integer $var_a; // Identifier starts with $ -> Invalid integer v$ar_a; // Identifier contains alphabets and $ -> Valid integer 2var; // Identifier starts with a digit -> Invalid integer var23_g; // Identifier contains alphanumeric characters and underscore -> Valid integer 23; // Identifier contains only numbers -> Invalid
Keywords
Keywords are special identifiers reserved to define the language constructs and are in lower case. A list of important keywords is given below.
Verilog Revisions
Verilog has undergone a few revisions over the years and more additions have been made from 1995 to 2001 which is shown below.
