Common Intermediate Language - Programming language

Common Intermediate Language, aka Common Intermediate Language, is an actively used programming language created in 2000. Common Intermediate Language (CIL, pronounced either sil or kil), formerly called Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL), is the lowest-level human-readable programming language defined by the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) specification and is used by the .NET Framework and Mono. Languages which target a CLI-compatible runtime environment compile to CIL, which is assembled into an object code that has a bytecode-style format. CIL is an object-oriented assembly language, and is entirely stack-based. Read more on Wikipedia...

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the Common Intermediate Language wikipedia page
Common Intermediate Language first appeared in 2000
See also: cli-assembly, assembly-language, csharp, x86-isa, java-bytecode, visual-basic-dot-net
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Example code from the web:

.assembly Hello {}
.assembly extern mscorlib {}
.method static void Main()
{
    .entrypoint
    .maxstack 1
    ldstr "Hello, world!"
    call void [mscorlib]System.Console::WriteLine(string)
    ret
}

Example code from Wikipedia:

.method assembly static void modopt([mscorlib]System.Runtime.CompilerServices.CallConvCdecl) 
        test_pointer_operations(int32 param) cil managed
{
  .vtentry 1 : 1
  // Code size       44 (0x2c)
  .maxstack  2
  .locals ([0] int32* ptr,
           [1] valuetype A* V_1,
           [2] valuetype A* a,
           [3] int32 k)
// k = 0;
  IL_0000:  ldc.i4.0 
  IL_0001:  stloc.3
// ptr = &k;
  IL_0002:  ldloca.s   k // load local's address instruction
  IL_0004:  stloc.0
// *ptr = 1;
  IL_0005:  ldloc.0
  IL_0006:  ldc.i4.1
  IL_0007:  stind.i4 // indirection instruction
// ptr = &param
  IL_0008:  ldarga.s   param // load parameter's address instruction
  IL_000a:  stloc.0
// *ptr = 2
  IL_000b:  ldloc.0
  IL_000c:  ldc.i4.2
  IL_000d:  stind.i4
// a = new A;
  IL_000e:  ldloca.s   a
  IL_0010:  call       valuetype A* modopt([mscorlib]System.Runtime.CompilerServices.CallConvThiscall) 'A.{ctor}'(valuetype A* modopt([mscorlib]System.Runtime.CompilerServices.IsConst) modopt([mscorlib]System.Runtime.CompilerServices.IsConst))
  IL_0015:  pop
// ptra = &a;
  IL_0016:  ldloca.s   a
  IL_0018:  stloc.1
// ptra->meth();
  IL_0019:  ldloc.1
  IL_001a:  dup
  IL_001b:  ldind.i4 // reading the VMT for virtual call
  IL_001c:  ldind.i4
  IL_001d:  calli      unmanaged stdcall void modopt([mscorlib]System.Runtime.CompilerServices.CallConvStdcall)(native int)
  IL_0022:  ret
} // end of method 'Global Functions'::test_pointer_operations

Last updated February 18th, 2020

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