signal and variable assignment problems

[wagnerrv]

I have written the following code to turn any integer into a string which I manipulate later.

LIBRARY ieee;
USE ieee.std_logic_1164.all;

ENTITY int2str IS
     PORT (number: IN integer;
                 str : OUT string(1 to 8)
                );
END int2str;

ARCHITECTURE Behavior of int2str IS
BEGIN
    process(number)
      variable subtractor, counter: integer := 0;
      variable num_tmp2 : integer;
      variable str_tmp : string (1 to 8);
      variable str_one : string(1 to 1);
    BEGIN
      num_tmp2:=number;
      [COLOR="Red"]-- num_tmp2: 8675309;[/COLOR]
      for j in 8 DOWNTO 1 loop
          subtractor := 10**(j-1);
          counter :=-1;
          poschk : for k in 0 to 9 loop
              num_tmp2 := num_tmp2 - subtractor;
              counter := k;
              exit poschk when num_tmp2 < 0;
          end loop poschkl
          num_tmp2 := num_tmp2 + subtractor;
          if (counter >-1) then
              str_one := integer'image(counter);
              str_tmp(9-j) := str_one(1);
          else
              str_tmp(9-j) := 'A';
          end if;
      end loop;
   str <= str_tmp;
   end process;

END Behavior;

Ignore general coding mistakes. I retyped the code rather than copy/paste, so I might have missed some things. But the code compiles fine.

The code works if I remove the comment tag for the red line. That is, if I force num_tmp2 to be a certain value in the code, that value is returned as a string. However, when I try to feed in a number by calling the code from another vhdl file, the only string that ever gets output is "00000000". What am I doing wrong?

(If you are interested/if it matters, the overall project is to use a DE2 board to read in TTL pulses, count the number of pulses received and display them via the HEX displays on the DE2 board. I can read in the pulses and count how many there are and I can write a string to the HEX displays, but I can't turn the number of pulses received into a string in order to write it out the HEX displays. So this code is to fill in the missing part in the middle.)