Method Call and Assignment

An assignment statement is the assignment of the value of an expression to an element. In case of an assignment to a complex element, only an element of the same type can be assigned. The assignment is then not the assignment of a value but of a reference. An assignment is a special case of a method call.

A special case is that of assigning a value to the return value of a method. In an SWC specified as block diagram, the associated sequence call must be the last sequence call of that method. In an SWC specified in ESDL, the method must be terminated with the return statement (see also Methods with a Return Value).

When calling a method in an SWC specified as block diagram, the corresponding sequence call has to be filled in properly and the arguments to the method have to be supplied.

In an SWC specified in ESDL, a method call has the following form:

without return value
<component name>.<method name>(<argument1>,<argument2>,...);
If the method has no arguments, the brackets remain empty.
with return value
<element> = <component name>.<method name>(<argument1>,<argument2>,...);
The return value of <method name> is assigned to <element>.