The option is serialized to RTLIL as `#` (to match Python's and Rust's
option with the same symbol), and sets the `show_base` flag. Because
the flag is called `show_base` and not e.g. `alternate_format` (which
is what Python and Rust call it), in addition to the prefixes `0x`,
`0X`, `0o`, `0b`, the RTLIL option also prints the `0d` prefix.
This format type is used to print an Unicode character (code point) as
its UTF-8 serialization. To this end, two UTF-8 decoders (one for fmt,
one for cxxrtl) are added for rendering. When converted to a Verilog
format specifier, `UNICHAR` degrades to `%c` with the low 7 bits of
the code point, which has equivalent behavior for inputs not exceeding
ASCII. (SystemVerilog leaves source and display encodings completely
undefined.)
Before this commit, the existing alignments were `LEFT` and `RIGHT`,
which added the `padding` character to the right and left just before
finishing formatting. However, if `padding == '0'` and the alignment is
to the right, then the padding character (digit zero) was added after
the sign, if one is present.
After this commit, the special case for `padding == '0'` is removed,
and the new justification `NUMERIC` adds the padding character like
the justification `RIGHT`, except after the sign, if one is present.
(Space, for the `SPACE_MINUS` sign mode, counts as the sign.)
The first two were already supported with the `plus` boolean flag.
The third one is a new specifier, which is allocated the ` ` character.
In addition, `MINUS` is now allocated the `-` character, but old format
where there is no `+`, `-`, or `-` in the respective position is also
accepted for compatibility.
Before this commit, the `STRING` variant inserted a literal string;
the `CHARACTER` variant inserted a string. This commit renames them
to `LITERAL` and `STRING` respectively.
The behavior of these format specifiers is highly specific to Verilog
(`$time` and `$realtime` are only defined relative to `$timescale`)
and may not fit other languages well, if at all. If they choose to use
it, it is now clear what they are opting into.
This commit also simplifies the CXXRTL code generation for these format
specifiers.
This commit achieves three roughly equally important goals:
1. To bring the rendering code in kernel/fmt.cc and in cxxrtl.h as close
together as possible, with an ideal of only having the bigint library
as the difference between the render functions.
2. To make the treatment of `$time` and `$realtime` in CXXRTL closer to
the Verilog semantics, at least in the formatting code.
3. To change the code generator so that all of the `$print`-to-`string`
conversion code is contained inside of a closure.
There are two reasons to aim for goal (3):
a. Because output redirection through definition of a global ostream
object is neither convenient nor useful for environments where
the output is consumed by other code rather than being printed on
a terminal.
b. Because it may be desirable to, in some cases, ignore the `$print`
cells that are present in the netlist based on a runtime decision.
This is doubly true for an upcoming `$check` cell implementing
assertions, since failing a `$check` would by default cause a crash.
Catherine
Charlotte