I'm trying to find out how could I check if a 3-bit bus has the msb set on 1, i.e. 1xx. When I check bus==3'b1xx nothing seems to happen.
The result of the expression you wrote can only be (1'b0) or (1'bx), which are both considered false for an if
statement branch.
Assuming you declared the bus as wire [2:0] bus;
you can check it using bus[2] == 1'b1
Now in SystemVerilog, you can do a wildcard match using bus ==? 3'b1xx
which treats the RHS X's as don't cares. X's on the LHS are treated the same as ==
.