Does bin_to_dec.luc from the component library handle negative numbers? If not, how can I implement it to do so?
Thanks
Great question. It does not currently support negative numbers.
The easiest way to do that would be to insert a stage before the module that checked if your value was negative. If it’s negative, output a “-” prefix, invert the input making it positive, and feed that into the bin_to_dec module.
If it’s positive, just carry on as before.
If you want the ‘-’ sign to be at the start of the value instead of at a fixed location, you could do something similar to an arbiter for finding where to insert it. (See the arbiter component in the Component Library)
I should also mention that you need to mark values as “signed” to support negative numbers. In your case you don’t really need to and could just check the sign (left-most) bit. The rules surrounding signed numbers are a bit weird. Mostly that all operands must be signed otherwise they’re all interpreted as unsigned.