VHDL: Is there a convenient way to assign ascii values to std_logic_vector?

Question

• In verilog, I can assign a string to a vector like:

  wire [39:0] hello;
  assign hello = \"hello\"; 
  

• In VHDL, I\'m having diffic

Answer 1

A small general function is one way to do it, with a suggestion below:

library ieee;
use ieee.numeric_std.all;
...
-- String to std_logic_vector convert in 8-bit format using character'pos(c)
--
-- Argument(s):
-- - str: String to convert
--
-- Result: std_logic_vector(8 * str'length - 1 downto 0) with left-most
-- character at MSBs.
function to_slv(str : string) return std_logic_vector is
  alias str_norm : string(str'length downto 1) is str;
  variable res_v : std_logic_vector(8 * str'length - 1 downto 0);
begin
  for idx in str_norm'range loop
    res_v(8 * idx - 1 downto 8 * idx - 8) := 
      std_logic_vector(to_unsigned(character'pos(str_norm(idx)), 8));
  end loop;
  return res_v;
end function;