[LLVMdev] Generics

[Carl-Philip Hänsch]

Hi,

I'm about designing the compiler backend of my script language and I have
generic types in the language. An example is the array. An array#int means
array of integers. You can compare it to Java's generics. Whenever i have a
variable of the type "generic", the type should be replaced by the really
used type.
Now the question is: how do i represent them in llvm without losing too much
memory or CPU cycles?
I figured out three ways to do it. Which do you think is the best?

1. Duplicating the implementations for each used type
very hard to implement because it needs a lot of restructuring the backend

2. Defining data type "generic" as a record of all possible types
would be fast but memory intensive; would need an optimization pass that
removes unused variables from a struct (is there such pass?)

3. Defining data type "generic" as a union of all possible types
would safe a lot of memory, but would destroy all optimizations because of
the bitcasts; i dont know how to implement unions in llvm

3 is the way it is done in the interpreter, so i would prefer a way that is
very close to 3.
Suggestions?
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