Reversing Bytes in an Integer Using Streaming Operator

SystemVerilog
,
1

I am trying to come up with an expression to reverse the bytes of a 32 bit Integer.
Below code seems to work but I don’t understand it especially the line k = {<<{bitq}}. I try to read the number, left to right in a bit[3:0] queue. I reverse the order of the bytes in queue and somehow the line above results in each byte of the int reversed. Can someone please explain how does the streaming operator work in this case

module tb;
  
  
  int k;
  // Reverse of A is 5, B is D, C is 3 and D is B
  // Reverse of ABCD is 5D3B, we want k to be byte reversed so
  // answer should be k = 32'h5d3b5d3b
  bit[3:0] bitq[$];
 int x;
  
  
  initial begin
  
 
    k = 32'hABCDABCD;
    bitq = {>>4{{k}}};
    $displayh("%p",bitq);
    bitq = {<<4{bitq}};
    $displayh("%p",bitq);
    k = {<<{bitq}};
   
    $displayh("%h",k);
  end
endmodule
2

I don’t understand the description of your problem. Perhaps you mean nibbles which is 4-bits instead of bytes which is 8-bits. You are getting the answer you are expecting. You could do this in a single statement:

k = {<<{ {<<4{k}} }};

I would suggest trying other values like 32’h12345678 that are more asymmetric to get a better sense of what the operators are doing.