Coding style to minimize combinational path delay?

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I can't see the priority encoder point for the present code. As long as the IF conditions are mutually exclusive (of course they are!) there's no difference between the IF THEN ELSE chain and a case construct. Both can be expected to end up in the same gate level netlist. The actual effort depends however on the chosen state encoding.

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I think you are correct. I have in the past tried to convert this continuous assignment statement into a case construct and the resulting logic synthesised was very similar. No improvement in path delay could be achieved.