Added function "GetBinName" to CovPType

[Sebastian Dunst]

Hello,

In my testbench I ran into the requirement to have access to the “BinName”. Therfore I added the impure function GetBinName to CovPType.

Here is the declaration:

impure function GetBinName ( BinIndex : integer ) return string;

Here is the implementation:

impure function GetBinName ( BinIndex : integer ) return string is

  variable buf : line;

begin

  if CovBinPtr(BinIndex).Name.all /= "" then

    swrite(buf, CovBinPtr(BinIndex).Name.all);

  else

    swrite(buf, "Nameless Bin");

  end if;

  return buf.all;

end function GetBinName;

[Jim Lewis]

Hi Sebastian,

I can add that capability in the next release.  

I note that in your code, you never deallocate buf and as a result have a memory leak.  You can fix this by simplifying your code to:

impure function GetBinName ( BinIndex : integer ) return string is
begin
  if CovBinPtr(BinIndex).Name.all /= "" then
    return CovBinPtr(BinIndex).Name.all) ;
  else
    return "Nameless Bin" ;
  end if;
end function GetBinName;

To be consistent with other OSVVM implementations, I will implement  something like the following:

impure function GetBinName ( BinIndex : integer; DefaultName : string := "" ) return string is
begin
  if CovBinPtr(BinIndex).Name.all /= "" then
    return CovBinPtr(BinIndex).Name.all) ;
  else
    return DefaultName ;
  end if;
end function GetBinName;

Cheers,
Jim

[Jim Lewis]

Hi Sebastian

I have implemented my 2nd solution and pushed the solution to my GitHub development branch.  You can find it at:  https://github.com/JimLewis/OSVVM/tree/Dev

Best Regards,

Jim

[Sebastian Dunst]

Hi Jim,
thank you very much for adding this function.

But I am a little afraid that there seems to be no easy solution for handling strings with an unknown length. This is a standard issue in most of my procedures or functions.
I always thought that a “local” variable inside a function or a procedure is stored on stack and is automatically freeed when running out of scope.
So there must be something special about the type “line”. Probably some kind of a pointer, which allocates memory in the background.
But what would be your advice for creating strings with an unknown length?

Thanks,
Sebastian

[Torsten]

Line, as defined in textio package, is string access type:

type line is access string;

When I have strings of unknown length, I also use an access type. But maybe there is another option, which I don’t know…

[Author]

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