Main article: Common Intermediate Language

This article describes the syntax of the Common Intermediate Language assembly language, abbr. as CIL.

Basics

Data types

CIL has three groups of built-in datatypes.

Numerics types: int32, int64, native int, F
Object reference: O
Pointer types: native unsigned int, &

Instruction set

See also: List of CIL instructions

CIL bytecode has instructions for the following groups of tasks:

These are written inside of the body of a function declaration.

Modifier attributes

Member attributes instance

Declarations

Modules

Global functions

Classes

Methods

A method is a function or subroutin that belongs to a class. It contains a return type and possibly a parameter list is such is defined. A method in CIL can either be an instance member or a type member that is part of the class and not any specific object.

This is an instance method called Bar and that takes one parameter. It takes the parameter does something to it

 .method private instance void Bar(int32) cil managed
 {
     .maxstack 2
     nop 
     ldarg.0 
     call instance class ConsoleApplication1.Token ConsoleApplication1.Parser::GetLookaheadToken()
     ret 
 }

Constructors

A constructor, or initializer, is a method that is called when a type is about to get created or used for the first time. CIL supports both instance initializers and type initializers.

Initializers are simply ordinary methods that return void but have special names.

Instance initializer An instance initializer is what usually is called a constructor. As the name suggests it initialize an object instance with initial data. It is called when the newobj instruction is called with it as its argument.

 .method public void .ctor()
 {
     .maxstack 1
     
     ldarg.0
     call instance void [mscorlib]System.Object::.ctor()
     
     ldstr ".ctor"
     call void [mscorlib]System.Console::WriteLine(string)
     
     ret
 }

In the example above the constructor of the base class System.Object::.ctor is called first.

Destructors

Try-Catch blocks

Properties

Properties are a piece of syntactic sugar wraps the traditional accessor convention that what often would be getter and setter methods. In CIL they are treated as a special member that usually in a high-level language like C# is implemented with a field like syntax.

In the CIL the properties are declared as a separate structure. The signatures of the .get and .set methods reside inside the declaration. These are implemented separately like any other method but are treated specially at runtime.

 //An instance property with both a getter and a setter.
 .property instance int32 Age
 {
     .get instance int32 Person::get_Age()
     .set instance void Person::set_Age(int32)
 }

A property must have a getter but the setter can be left to make it read-only. Properties can be both static class members as well as instance members.

Inheritance

In CIL class can extend, or inherit, one class. If none is specified then it will implicitly inherit System.Object which is the ultimate base class of all objects in the Common Language Infrastructure.

 .class public auto ansi beforefieldinit Horse
     extends Mammal
 {
 }

Implement interfaces

A class can implement multiple interfaces.

 .class public auto ansi beforefieldinit Whale
     extends Mammal implements ISeaDweller
 {
 }

Interfaces

Enumerations

External links