9.3.1 The assign and deassign procedural statements

IEEE Std 1364™-2001, IEEE Standard Verilog® Hardware Description Language

The assign procedural continuous assignment statement shall override all procedural assignments to a variable. The deassign procedural statement shall end a procedural continuous assignment to a variable. The value of the variable shall remain the same until the reg is assigned a new value through a procedural assignment or a procedural continuous assignment. The assign and deassign procedural statements allow, for example, modeling of asynchronous clear/preset on a D-type edge-triggered flip-flop, where the clock is inhibited when the clear or preset is active.

If the keyword assign is applied to a variable for which there is already a procedural continuous assignment, then this new procedural continuous assignment shall deassign the variable before making the new procedural continuous assignment.

Example:

The following example shows a use of the assign and deassign procedural statements in a behavioral description of a D-type flip-flop with preset and clear inputs.

module dff (q, d, clear, preset, clock);
output q;
input d, clear, preset, clock;
reg q;
always @(clear or preset)
if (!clear)
assign q = ;
else if (!preset)
assign q = ;
else
deassign q;
always @(posedge clock)
q = d;
endmodule

If either clear or preset is low, then the output q will be held continuously to the appropriate constant value and a positive edge on the clock will not affect q.When both the clear and preset are high, then q is deassigned.