language-cil: Manipulating Common Intermediate Language AST

Language-Cil is a Haskell library for manipulating CIL abstract syntax and generating .il files using the concrete syntax of CIL.

Common Intermediate Language (CIL), formerly known as Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL), is the lowest level language that runs on the Microsoft .NET and Mono platforms.

The examples directory has a couple of files showing how to construct different CIL ASTs.

Read more on the Wikipedia page on Common Intermediate Language.

Current status

This library is still very much under development. Only a subset of the full CIL AST is implemented.

A parser for concrete syntax has not yet been implemented.

Module overview

• Language.Cil Top level module, reexports sub modules
• Language.Cil.Analysis Some analysis functions over AST, not really used yet.
• Language.Cil.Build Smart constructors and convenience functions, it is suggested to use these over raw AST constructors.
• Language.Cil.Pretty Pretty printer function pr. Returns a ShowS.
• Language.Cil.Syntax Concrete AST data types.

Getting started

1. Make sure you have Mono or .NET installed.

2. Install the library.

3. Create an AST, eg: module Example where

   import Language.Cil
   
   main :: IO ()
   main = writeAssembly "Test.il" ass
   
   ass :: Assembly
   ass = simpleAssembly
     [ nop
        -- Print message to stdout
     , ldstr "Enter an integer and press return."
     , call [] Void "mscorlib" "System.Console" "WriteLine" [String]
     
       -- Reads an integer from stdin, add one to it, print result to stdout.
     , call [] String "mscorlib" "System.Console" "ReadLine" []
     , call [] Int32 "" "int32" "Parse" [String]
     
     , ldc_i4 1
     , add
     , call [] Void "mscorlib" "System.Console" "WriteLine" [Int32]
     
     , ret
     ]
   

4. Write the AST to a file by running main.

5. Run the IL assembler: ilasm Test.il

6. Run the generated executable: mono Test.exe (or Test.exe on Windows)