Robert’s WebLog

Common Intermediate Language, simply known as CIL, IL or MSIL (among the legacy coders). This is not to be confused with C Intermediate Language which is also abbreviated as CIL. CIL is a stack-based high-level assembly language which is used as an intermediate language by virtual machines such as the CLR (Common Language Runtime) and the Mono Runtime. It is because it has a fairly simple syntax that can easily be translated into native machine code. As a part of the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI, a standard developed by Microsoft) it is the most significant piece of the .NET Framework, among others. Compilers which are written for the specific frameworks support the CLI standard and are translated to CIL. This can be done entirely or partially, like C++/CLI (which can mix it with native code). Because of that they can interop with other programs written in other CLI languages through the virtual machine. CIL is cross-platform and can be be executed on different machine architectures without being modificated or recompiled. The only thing that is needed is an implementation of the virtual machine targeting the specific processor and operating system. CIL is also, in many aspects, similar to Java bytecode which is executed by the Java Virtual Machine (JVM).

CIL is stack-based, in difference to many native machine languages that are register-based. This means that everytime you want to manipulate an object (a type or an unit of code) you put it on the stack and call an op code (language instruction) that is performing an operation, i.g. adding two values. Thereby adding the two objects (Int32 or simply 32-bit integers) on the top of the stack and leaving the sum of those. The stack should be empty at the end of runtime. See the example.

IL:

ldc.i4.3 //Loads a constant in the stack
ldc.i4.2
add

Stack:

2 //Int32
3 //Int32

After the last operation (add) this will remain on the stack:

5 //Int32

If you had only one object on the stack and performed the add operation you would get a stack underflow.
The opposite is stack overflow that is caused by objects remaining on the stack in the end of the program. These errors are often caused by bugged compilers.

Some common op codes are:

ldstr "Kazoom" //Puts a string on the stack
ldarg.0 //Loads the method argument at the index 0 and puts it on the stack
ldc.i4.29 //Puts an integer, 29, on the stack
ldloca.s lcal //Loads a local (name lcal) an places it on top of the stack
call //Used when calling a method
newobj //Used when instanciating an object

// Arithmic operations that pops two values from the top of the stack.
add
sub
mul
div
mod

This is the most simple part of the CIL language. Because of the object-oriented nature of CLI you are able to use some OOP approach in your programming. Many of the constructs found in the programming languages at a higher level are represented directly as IL. For instance, a class declaration looks like this:

.class public MyClass
{

}

A class can be declared as static (non-instance class) with the static attribute static.

.class public static MyStaticClass
{

}

Classes contains methods defined this way:

.method Int32 Add(Int32, Int32)
{
      //Load both arguments on the stack and add them, then return the value.
      ldarg.0
      ldarg.1
      add
      ret
}

Likewise to classes, methods can also be marked as static.

This syntax, is like the class syntax, very similar to the C style. The only difference is the IL opcodes instead of ordinary statements. Another thing you must know is that methods always ends with a return statement even though they do not seem to return any value. In reallity theres a value, void. This will the runtime engine (virtual machine) handle for you.

To make a method the entrypoint of the program you add the .entrypoint attribute inside the method body. Notice that you can only have one entrypoint in a program.

Local variables (mostly refered to as locals) are also defined as attributes inside a method.

.locals init (
      [0] string str1
      [1] Int32 int1)

Those locals named by the compilers often have a random name consisting of letters and a number.

Because of performance there is also a .maxstack attribute which sets the maximum numbers of items on the stack. This tells the runtime engine that this method needs a stack of this size. Now is the virtual machine able to manage the amount of memory.

There are a lot of other things as well. I will not dig deeper into it because it is to much at a time. If you are familiar with a high-level language or any other stack-based and object-oriented intermediate language, like the Parrot Intermediate Language you, should understand the IL too.

Finally, this is the Hello World program in IL style. You can try to assemble it with ILASM (IL Assembler) ported with .NET Framework or Mono.

.method public static void Main() cil managed
{    
      .entrypoint    
      .maxstack 8    
      ldstr "Hello world!."    
      call void [mscorlib]System.Console::WriteLine(string)    
      ret
}

I have written a lot of code since my last post (Report 1). I have written a parser (an object-oriented) that is working, everything but expression parsing. Not yet! Then I started on the code generator which ended up quite well. The only thing I really hate is that I can’t find a way to generate two types with fields of the other type. I have to find a solution soon… and I will. I’m sure. I’m also working on a new symbol table class that I want to use during code generation.

Please check out my compiler (Pascal Compiler for .NET Framework v.0.0.1).
Requires Windows XP/Vista and .NET Framework 3.5.

Download it here!

 

Notes:

The compiler…

• supports definitions of types, functions, procedure and variables.
• supports Primitive types such as Integer, Double, Boolean, Char and String.
• has these Complex types: Record, Enum and Dynamic Array.
• can only parse the expression WriteLn([stringliteral]);
• only supports single sourcefiles.

 

I have been working on a compiler for the .NET Framework, i.e. a compiler that produces IL instead of ordinary machine code. I want to share my plans and thoughts about this little compiler I’m working on.
In this blogpost I’ll concentrate on explaining my project.

First I just want to explain some words that I will or may use in this series of articles.

• assembly language - machine specific language dependend of the instruction set of the system.
• programming language - a language constructed to make software development easier by introducing certain abstractions that makes it easier for humans to write and understand.
• compiler - a program that compiles (translates) codes written in a high level-language into object code (assembly language). A compiler for a assembly language is usualy called assembler.
• IL (a.k.a CIL and MSIL) is a high-level assembly language created by Microsoft that is to be executed on a virtual machine made according the Common Language Infrastructure standard. Can be executed by virtual machines such as the CLR (Windows) or the Mono Runtime (Linux). This means that IL is not bound to a specific platform, in contrast to native assembly languages. IL is Microsoft’s response to Sun’s Java Bytecode.
• virtual machine - A program working on top of a system that simulates another system. In this case the CLR or the Java Runtime that is converting bytecode into native code (object code) and executes it. A virtual machine can therefore test the code and then execute it if it does not contain any errors or bad code.
• front-end and back-end are terms used in compiler construction. Front-end usaully refers to the scanner and parser. That is why scanner and parser sometimes is incorrectly known as the parser. The Back-end contains the code generator and preprocessor (if any). The idea of these two is that you can switch parts, for example writing a new code generator for another system, without changeing the rest (the front-end).
• lexical scanner, lexer or scanner is a program that creates tokens of the input code by following a set of rules. A scanner is usually constructed to work as a Defininite State Machine and use regualar expressions. We have for example the following line of code (written in C-style): int myNumber = 20 + 3; “int” would be a keyword, “myNumber” a identifier, “=” an operator, “20″ a number or integral and so on. Scanners are often generated by a scanner generator because they are performing better than those written by programmers. 
• parser - A program that is considered the heart of the compiler because it is creating a presentation of the code that is easier to use when generating machine code. The parser is following rules that decides how the code is going to be interpreted and then creates an Abstract Syntax Tree (AST).
  The AST is then easily converted to machine code by the code generator.

I am using an object-oriented approach when constructing my compiler. That means that there will be objects that will symbolize for example tokens, the scanner, the parser and the code generator. Why? Because it is a lot easier to think that way. I cannot manage to do this the procedural way like legendary constructors like Niklaus Wirth did. Another reason is that I am a OOP programmer and I’m attached to C# and the .NET Framework.

The purpose of this project is only educational. I want to learn how a compiler works and especially the parts of it. I am not trying to build a “perfect” compiler that supports all the CLR features. I will not concentrate on the performance either because that is not important. I want the compiler to work before I think of that, and of course it is of beyond the scope of this project.

I want the back-end and front-end to be separate and independent in that way that you can reuse its components and modify them if necessary. But I will firstly concentrate on getting everything working and then try to make these changes.

I have defined a small OO language called Simple Programming Language that I will use as the source language compiled by the compiler that I will write. More details on it in one of the following blogposts.

I have decided to implement Pascal instead of my own SPL. It’s because I have had som issues with it. It is not a good thing to start implementing a compiler for a full OOP langauge as ones first real project.

Anyway, stay tuned!

.method public static void Main() cil managed
{    
      .entrypoint    
      .maxstack 8    
      ldstr "Hello world!."    
      call void [mscorlib]System.Console::WriteLine(string)    
      ret
}