Any chance of Life being easy?

[josegamez]

Ok I see your point, although those aren't quite equivalent yet. A verilog statement like Datum[6:4] = 2 would change all bits from bit 6 to bit 4 of Datum, turning Datum into X010XXXX where the X's are the previous bit values of Datum before the statement. So referring to Datum as Datum[6:4] is like having a new 3 bit variable where Datum[4] is the new bit 0, Datum[5] is the new bit 1 and Datum[6] is the new bit 2 to complete the three bit variable. But thanks I guess I'll have to work my way around with those sort of tricks. Thanks for your time, God bless.

[paul borgmeier]

As is clear from above, I have never used verilog ...., for completeness this not so pretty approach still works

;Datum[6:4] = 2
Datum.6=0
Datum.5=1
Datum.4=0

;IF PORTB[5:1] = 3 THEN
If (PORTB & $3E) = $06 THEN

OR you could blast the first type with inline ASM

;Datum[6:4] = 2
Datum var byte
ASM
   movlw	0x20          ; b00100000 new values
   xorwf 	_Datum, W  
   andlw 	0x70          ; b01110000 mask values
   xorwf 	_Datum, F     ; bX010XXXX
ENDASM

Others might have a cleaner method?

EDIT - added comments to ASM routine

[josegamez]

OK thanks a lot, I'll try that