Talk:Intermediate representation

Comments

what about pir? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parrot_intermediate_representation --84.109.66.8 (talk) 16:24, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

 Done. I added Parrot intermediate representation to the article. --68.0.124.33 (talk) 01:48, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Intermediate representation -- Intermediate language merge proposal

I propose to merge the article intermediate representation into intermediate language. To me, the articles read as such that an intermediate representation is an element from the set defined by a grammar which defines an intermediate language. It would therefore make sense to discuss both concepts in one article. --Abdull (talk) 16:18, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

I think it is opposite. Intermediate representation may become arbitrary graph structure. That is not a language.--MetaNest (talk) 07:34, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

the industry has evolved to include other sorts of intermediate representations which are not reflected in this article. Editing it the way it is structured does not allow for additional information to be added. Please note that industry has a new standard that delivers intermediate representation of the metadata structures of programming languages. It is an OMG and ISO standard. In some sense it is a way to compile. but you are compiling into a very detailed modeling framework which allows the representation of source, binary and byte code. The standard/spec is being used to deliver reverse engineering solutions that provide comprehensive static analysis. Can the owner provide a way to resolve this issue of an area not covered in this article? Would appreciate feedback. (75.103.6.2 (talk) 17:28, 26 June 2012 (UTC)). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.103.6.2 (talk) 17:24, 26 June 2012 (UTC) (75.103.6.2 (talk) 17:28, 26 June 2012 (UTC)).

Is C an intermediate language?

This doesn't sound like correct usage, because C isn't suitable to use inside a compiler while performing optimizations. From the compiler's point of view, it's the target language. (Of course it's then translated to binary, but that happens in a different compiler.)

Similarly, some compilers translate code to JavaScript, but this doesn't mean JavaScript is an intermediate language. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.254.13.132 (talk) 20:09, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

I guess one could argue that any language that is used as an intermediate step/translation between two other languages is an intermediate language. But... it's not what people typically mean by IR. By IR, people mean a non-source-code language. Something more like machine code yet not tightly bound to particular processor hardware. Stevebroshar (talk) 11:49, 13 August 2025 (UTC)

Requested move 12 February 2016

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved. @François Robere: I am not familiar with this subject, so can you please rewrite the article as appropriate, particularly the introduction. Thanks, Number 57 22:15, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

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Intermediate language → Intermediate representation – The following sources suggest that Intermediate Language is a sub-topic of Intermediate Representation, not the other way around as the current version of the article suggests:

• Chow, Fred (2013-11-22). "The Challenge of Cross-language Interoperability". ACM Queue. 11 (10). Retrieved 2016-02-12.
• Toal, Ray. "Intermediate Representations". Retrieved 2016-02-12.
• Walker, David. "CS320: Compilers: Intermediate Representation" (Lecture slides). Retrieved 2016-02-12.
• Johnson, Maggie; Zelenski, Julie (2008). "CS143: Compilers: Intermediate Representation" (Lecture notes). Retrieved 2016-02-12. François Robere (talk) 17:46, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
• Support I think IR is the more common variant. —Ruud 13:58, 14 February 2016 (UTC)
• Support IR seems more common in textbooks and other pedagogy. IR is also more general than IL; ASTs could be considered IRs but most wouldn't call them languages. --Mark viking (talk) 21:34, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

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Is bytecode an intermediate representation?

Seems to me that bytecode is an intermediate representation. But unlike other (older?) IR implementations, it's fully exposed instead of being an implementation detail of a compiler. Is this correct? If so, then the content should be updated to not say that IR is an internal representation as bytecode (i.e. for Java and .NET) is very external. Stevebroshar (talk) 13:36, 11 August 2025 (UTC)

I agree that there seem to be 2 very different things squeezed into this one article, perhaps misleadingly implying they are synonyms. (1). One represents a program as an ad-hoc intermediate stage (for example, SDCC's AST (Annotated Syntax Tree)) in an optimizing compiler, only briefly existing in memory before being transformed either into some other intermediate language (for example, SDCC's iCode) or into machine-specific assembly language; this may be a relatively sequential form such as static single-assignment form or this may be a relatively unordered graph structure. (2). The other represents a partially-compiled program serialized into a standardized machine-independent form intended to be stored in a file indefinitely (for example, Java bytecode), transmitted to other machines, and feed into some sort of machine-specific executable ("application virtual machine" or P-code machine).

It appears that someone thought these two kinds of things were similar enough that both of them could be merged into article covering both of them.

(a) What are the standard terms and names for these 3 ideas?: (1). "ephemeral intermediate stage representation", (2). "long-lived machine-independent representation intended to be stored in a file", and (3). "the general category covering all machine-independent representations automatically derived from human-written source code, including both (1) and (2)."

(b) Do we have enough content to justify split up these 3 things into 2 or 3 different Wikipedia articles? As long as we clearly name all 3 things and the differences between them to avoid incorrectly implying they are synonyms, I'm OK with putting all of them into one article, since there are some things they have in common, in accordance with WP:OVERLAP -- similar to the way that, for example, a single Wikipedia article covers all of 6501, 6502, and MOS 6512 and the differences between them; similar to the way that, for example, a single Wikipedia article covers token-threaded code, direct threading, and subroutine-threaded code, and also the differences between them. --DavidCary (talk) 00:26, 4 November 2025 (UTC) edited --DavidCary (talk) 06:15, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I also see some discussion in the Talk:Bytecode talk page, where there seems to be confusion between how some people use "bytecode" to refer to *any* machine-independent lower-level language (even ones that are not byte-sized), while other people use "bytecode" to refer to *any* byte-sized language (including a wide range from high-level, highly-portable sed scripts to lowest-level VAX machine code). Are there a better, or at least less ambiguous, 2 terms for these 2 categories of computer languages?

--DavidCary (talk) 01:19, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Similarly, Talk:Common Intermediate Language#Byte me asks: what's a general term to describe things that are like bytecode but has instructions that are 16-bits or otherwise *not* byte-sized? --DavidCary (talk) 03:03, 4 November 2025 (UTC)