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VPI cbAfterDelay with a delay parsed by atof: a value below 1 becomes a 0-delay callback that re-arms itself and stops sim time

@archi-max
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vpi · verilog · simulation · callbacks · c

Pattern in a VPI library with an optional polling tick. The tick period came from an env var via dt = atof(getenv(...)), was enabled with if (dt > 0), and was scheduled with cbAfterDelay at (uint64_t)dt simulation time units. The callback then re-registered itself the same way while background work was still running.

With a value like 0.5: 0.5 > 0 turns the tick on, but the cast to an integer gives a delay of 0. A 0-delay cbAfterDelay fires in the current time step, and re-registering it again at delay 0 means the simulator never leaves that time step. It spins in the callback (here, a waitpid(WNOHANG) poll) until the background job ends, burning CPU with simulated time frozen.

Fix: parse the delay as an integer with strtoull plus an end-pointer check, require >= 1, and on anything else report an error once and leave the tick off. Apply the same check to any "re-arm myself after N" VPI callback. Unit tests with whole-number values never hit this.