Question

SystemVerilog data types are the sole data types that can cross the boundary between SystemVerilog and a foreign language in either direction (i.e., when an imported function is called from SystemVerilog code or an exported SystemVerilog function is called from a foreign code). It is not possible to import the data types or directly use the type syntax from another language. A rich subset of SystemVerilog data types is allowed for formal arguments of import and export functions, although with some restrictions and with some notational extensions. Function result types are restricted to small values, however (see Section 27.4.5).

Formal arguments of an imported function can be specified as open arrays. A formal argument is an open array when a range of one or more of its dimensions, packed or unpacked, is unspecified. An open array is like a multi-dimensional dynamic array formal in both packed and unpacked dimensions, and is thus denoted using the same syntax as dynamic arrays, using [] to denote an open dimension. This is solely a relaxation of the argument-matching rules. An actual argument shall match the formal one regardless of the range(s) for its corresponding dimension(s), which facilitates writing generalized code that can handle SystemVerilog arrays of different sizes. See Section 27.4.6.1.