[LLVMdev] Proposal: extended MDString syntax

[Nadav Rotem]

Hi Dan, 

I am not against adding multi-line support for Metadata. I am also okay with your syntax, and I am also okay with other solutions, such as escaping of \n’s or adopting c-style concatenations of strings on multiple lines.  But I think that serialization of MachineFunction should not be done in metadata. I understand the problem that you pointer out that machine instructions refer to LLVM-IR, but I don’t think that metadata is the right container for them. 

Nadav

On Jun 26, 2013, at 3:29 PM, Dan Gohman <dan433584 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> I propose a new syntax for metadata strings (MDStrings) which would allow string data to be spread over multiple lines:
> 
> !0 = metadata !{metadata !"""
> hello
> world
> """}
> 
> The special three-quote sequence marks the beginning and end of a multi-line string.
> 
> This syntax could have a variety of uses, but of particular interest is that it could be used as a basis for serializing MachineFunctions. MachineFunctions are not an entirely self-contained IR; they contain references to LLVM IR. As such, a serialization of a MachineFunction needs to have an LLVM Module to refer to. By encoding MachineFunctions in metadata, they can easily accompany an LLVM Module. By being multi-line, the data could be made to be reasonably human-readable and human-editable.
> 
> Attached is a simple proof-of-concept patch which implements parsing and printing for this new MDString syntax.
> 
> Comments welcome!
> 
> Dan
> 
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