walk thru an enumeration

[ljepson74]

I needed to step thru an enum in a testbench today.  As it took me a while to figure out how to do it, I post a small example here.

I want to do it without making any assumptions of the values of the enums (values are the default type of int, in this case).

Reference: SystemVerilog doc "1800-2012.pdf" Section 6.19 Enumerations

 

module top;
   //typedef enum {alpha=0, beta=1, gamma=2, delta=3, epsilon=4} greek;  //to show default assignments
   typedef enum {alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon} greek;
   greek letters2;

   initial begin
      $display("****** Walk thru an enumeration example. ***********");

      for (greek letters=letters.first(), int walk=0;
           walk < letters.num();
           letters=letters.next(), walk++) begin
           $display(" %0d *** %0s", letters, letters.name);
      end
   end
endmodule : top

Output:

****** Walk thru an enumeration example. ***********
 0 *** alpha
 1 *** beta
 2 *** gamma
 3 *** delta
 4 *** epsilon

I'm also posting here, because when I am trying to remember how to do something, I find it often easier to find my postings online than an example in my own code.

I thought I did this nicely with a foreach loop, but cannot find it, so may be imagining it.

 

I was not keen on having to use variable walk.  If someone can show me how to do this with a foreach loop or without using an extra variable, like I did with "walk", please do.

 

Noted failures:
      for (greek letters=letters.first(); letters!=letters.last();    letters=letters.next()) begin //shows only 0-3
      for (greek letters=letters.first(); letters<=(letters.num()-1); letters=letters.next()) begin //neverending loop

 

[dave_59]

You can use a do-while loop:

module top;
   //typedef enum {alpha=0, beta=1, gamma=2, delta=3, epsilon=4} greek;  //to show default assignments
   typedef enum {alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon} greek;
   greek letters;
   
   initial begin
      $display("****** Walk thru an enumeration example. ***********");
      letters = letters.first;
      do begin
         $display(" %0d *** %0s", letters, letters.name);
     letters = letters.next;
      end
      while (letters != letters.first);
  end
endmodule : top