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 difficulty finding a method like this:

  SIGNAL hello : OUT std_logic_vector (39 DOWNTO 0);
  ...
  hello <= "hello";
  

I've been using:

hello <= X"65_68_6c_6c_6f";

which is unclear and time consuming for large strings.

I've looked at the textio package and thetxt_util package, but neither seem to be very clear on how to interpret a string and convert it to std_logic.

Is there a simple method of assigning ascii codes to std_logic in VHDL?

Here's a minimal example:

LIBRARY ieee;
USE ieee.std_logic_1164.ALL;

ENTITY test IS
PORT(
   ctrl : IN std_logic;
   stdout : OUT std_logic_vector (39 DOWNTO 0)
);
END ENTITY;

ARCHITECTURE rtl OF test IS
   SIGNAL temp : std_logic_vector (39 DOWNTO 0);
BEGIN
   stdout <= temp;
   PROCESS(ctrl)
   BEGIN
      IF (ctrl = '0') THEN
         temp <= "hello"; -- X"68_65_6C_6C_6F";
      ELSE
         temp <= "world";
      END IF;
   END PROCESS;

END rtl;

Answer 1

To return an ascii value of a character, use this code:

some_variable <= character'pos('a'); --returns the 'a' ascii value

Answer 2

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;