VHDL – Does VHDL Have a Ternary Operator

ternary-operatorvhdl

I love the neatness of the ternary operator vs if clauses.

Does this operator exist in vhdl? My search was to the contrary. I also checked the when statement out, but it's not an operator, and I want to be able to use it in processes, too…

Best Answer

No. It was discussed for VHDL-2008, but didn't get in. You've got a couple of options. If your tools support VHDL-2008, conditional assignments are now supported as sequential statements (they were previously just concurrent), so you can write something like:

process(clock)
begin
  if rising_edge(clock) then
    q <= '0' when reset else d; -- ie. much like q <= reset? '0':d;
  end if;
end process;

If you haven't got 2008, just write a function (q <= sel(reset, '0', d)). You have to write it for every type you're interested in, though.

Related Solutions

R – Does the Ternary Operator Exist?

As if is function in R and returns the latest evaluation, if-else is equivalent to ?:.

> a <- 1
> x <- if(a==1) 1 else 2
> x
[1] 1
> x <- if(a==2) 1 else 2
> x
[1] 2

The power of R is vectorization. The vectorization of the ternary operator is ifelse:

> a <- c(1, 2, 1)
> x <- ifelse(a==1, 1, 2)
> x
[1] 1 2 1
> x <- ifelse(a==2, 1, 2)
> x
[1] 2 1 2

Just kidding, you can define c-style ?::

`?` <- function(x, y)
    eval(
      sapply(
        strsplit(
          deparse(substitute(y)), 
          ":"
      ), 
      function(e) parse(text = e)
    )[[2 - as.logical(x)]])

here, you don't need to take care about brackets:

> 1 ? 2*3 : 4
[1] 6
> 0 ? 2*3 : 4
[1] 4
> TRUE ? x*2 : 0
[1] 2
> FALSE ? x*2 : 0
[1] 0

but you need brackets for assignment :(

> y <- 1 ? 2*3 : 4
[1] 6
> y
[1] 1
> y <- (1 ? 2*3 : 4)
> y
[1] 6

Finally, you can do very similar way with c:

`?` <- function(x, y) {
  xs <- as.list(substitute(x))
  if (xs[[1]] == as.name("<-")) x <- eval(xs[[3]])
  r <- eval(sapply(strsplit(deparse(substitute(y)), ":"), function(e) parse(text = e))[[2 - as.logical(x)]])
  if (xs[[1]] == as.name("<-")) {
    xs[[3]] <- r
        eval.parent(as.call(xs))
  } else {
    r
  }
}

You can get rid of brackets:

> y <- 1 ? 2*3 : 4
> y
[1] 6
> y <- 0 ? 2*3 : 4
> y
[1] 4
> 1 ? 2*3 : 4
[1] 6
> 0 ? 2*3 : 4
[1] 4

These are not for daily use, but maybe good for learning some internals of R language.

C++ – Using Ternary Operator with Different Types

I don't have N3936 handy, but N3797 §5.12 [expr.cond]/3 contains this (emphasis mine):

Otherwise, if the second and third operand have different types and either has (possibly cv-qualified) class type, or if both are glvalues of the same value category and the same type except for cv-qualification, an attempt is made to convert each of those operands to the type of the other. The process for determining whether an operand expression E1 of type T1 can be converted to match an operand expression E2 of type T2 is defined as follows:

If E2 is an lvalue: [removed]

If E2 is an xvalue: [removed]

If E2 is a prvalue or if neither of the conversions above can be done and at least one of the operands has (possibly cv-qualified) class type:

if E1 and E2 have class type, and the underlying class types are the same or one is a base class of the other:
E1 can be converted to match E2 if the class of T2 is the same type as, or a base class of, the class of T1, and the cv-qualification of T2 is the same cv-qualification as, or a greater cv-qualification than, the cv-qualification of T1. If the conversion is applied, E1 is changed to a prvalue of type T2 by copy-initializing a temporary of type T2 from E1 and using that temporary as the converted operand.

Using this process, it is determined whether the second operand can be converted to match the third operand, and whether the third operand can be converted to match the second operand. If both can be converted, or one can be converted but the conversion is ambiguous, the program is ill-formed. If neither can be converted, the operands are left unchanged and further checking is performed as described below. If exactly one conversion is possible, that conversion is applied to the chosen operand and the converted operand is used in place of the original operand for the remainder of this section.

Now to copy-initialize the final Base operand from Derived(), we can look at §13.3.1.3 [over.match.ctor]:

When objects of class type are direct-initialized (8.5), or copy-initialized from an expression of the same or a derived class type (8.5), overload resolution selects the constructor. For direct-initialization, the candidate functions are all the constructors of the class of the object being initialized. For copy-initialization, the candidate functions are all the converting constructors (12.3.1) of that class. The argument list is the expression-list or assignment-expression of the initializer.

Converting constructors are defined as follows in §12.3.1 [class.conv.ctor]:

A constructor declared without the function-specifier explicit specifies a conversion from the types of its parameters to the type of its class. Such a constructor is called a converting constructor.

Now, if you'll believe me (for the sake of not having to quote more than I have of 13.3) that a prvalue Derived() will cause overload resolution to choose the move constructor (taking Base&&), despite being deleted, this causes the error from Clang.

In conclusion, Clang is correct in issuing an error. As using a deleted function requires a diagnostic, this is a bug in GCC.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

R – Does the Ternary Operator Exist?

C++ – Using Ternary Operator with Different Types

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