[LLVMdev] printing

[John McCall]

On Dec 8, 2010, at 10:45 PM, Jonas Paulsson wrote:
> I have made some usigned ConstantInt's, and when I print them (dump()), they are printed as signed always. Why is this? I do not know how to change the debug format for them.

Values of the integer types in LLVM are really bit-patterns, not values;  whether a value is signed or unsigned is a meaning that you impose on the value, not something inherent in the value.  So the choice of how to dump is basically arbitrary, but I think the basic reasoning is that:
  - we want to print as decimal, because the most important cases are small positive numbers, and printing those in hex would be obnoxious
  - small negative numbers all look like each other when they've been printed as their unsigned equivalents
  - large unsigned numbers are usually bitmasks anyway, so the mere act of printing them in decimal will already obscure their meaning

John.
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