[LLVMdev] First-class aggregate semantics

[David Greene]

On Thursday 07 January 2010 15:28, Dustin Laurence wrote:
> I think I'm missing something basic about the semantics of returning an
> aggregate type (in my case, a structure) from a function.  Returning a
> structure containing only compile-time constants is simple enough.  But
> I don't quite get how this works with a struct composed at run-time.  If
> I constructed it on the stack with alloca, would I be letting a stack
> variable escape to to a context where it doesn't exist if I return it?
> Or does the return semantics guarantee it will be copied (or space
> allocated in the caller) appropriately?  Otherwise I should abandon the
> idea of returning such a struct and simply pass in a pointer to space
> allocated in the caller.
>
> I think my confusion stems from thinking in terms of high-level
> languages and not having done nearly enough assembly work to know what
> LLVM really wants to do, and I'd be grateful for a clue about the
> idiomatic way to do this.

The way this works on many targets is that the caller allocates stack
space in its frame for the returned struct and passes a pointer to it
as a first "hidden" argument to the callee.  The callee then copies
that data into the space pointed to by the address.

This is all specified by the ABI so it varies by processor and OS.
The target-dependent lowering pieces of LLVM should take care of it.

Long-term, first-class status means that returns of structs should
"just work" and you don't need to worry about getting a pointer to
invalid memory.  I believe right now, however, only structs up to a
certain size are supported, perhaps because under some ABIs, small
structs can be returned in registers and one doesn't need to worry
about generating the hidden argument.

Someone working directly on this can answer with more authority.

                              -Dave