What is supposed to happen in Verilog if a signal of one width is assigned to another signal of a different width?

As in these two cases:

wire [3:0] A, B;
wire [4:0] C, D;

assign A = C;  // larger width to smaller width
assign D = B;  // smaller width to larger width

What should A and D look like in terms of C and B respectively?

Answer

Verilog's rules are:

• if you copy a narrower value into a wider target, it is zero-extended (zero MSBs added to the left), or sign-extended into the target. Whether it is zero or sign-extended is determined by the signedness of the right-hand-side expression.


• if you copy a wider value to a narrower target, it gets truncated (MSBs removed on the left).

So it means, in your case:

assign A = C[3:0];
assign D = { 1'b0, B };

Note that most synthesis tools will issue a warning in these cases. And they should because it's then unclear you're doing things correctly.