[LLVMdev] [proposal] Extensible IR metadata

[Chris Lattner]

On Sep 11, 2009, at 11:08 AM, Kenneth Uildriks wrote:

> On Fri, Sep 11, 2009 at 11:57 AM, Chris Lattner <clattner at apple.com>  
> wrote:
>> The demand for metadata is even greater in non-C languages.  For  
>> high level
>> scripting languages like python, it would be nice to be able to do  
>> static type
>> inference and annotate various pointers with type class information  
>> ("this is
>> a python string object", "this is a dictionary", whatever).
>
> So this particular metadata would be an extension of the type?  And
> get propagated through as you create instructions that depend on other
> instructions which had the type metadata attached?

No, this would be a property of the operation.  In a dynamically typed  
language like python (and many others) a naive translation will turn  
all python objects into "void*"s.  However, with some static or  
dynamic analysis, many types can be guessed at or inferred.  This is a  
property of various operations, not about "void*".

-Chris