I am writing some tools to help validate IL that is emitted at runtime. A part of this validation involves maintaining a Stack<Type> as OpCodes are emitted so that future OpCodes that utilize these stack elements can be validated as using the proper types. I am confused as to how to handle the ldind.i opcode, however.
The Microsoft documentation states:
The ldind.i instruction indirectly loads a native int value from the specified address (of type native int, &, or *) onto the stack as a native int.
In C#, native int is not defined, and I am confused as to what type most accurately represents this data. How can I determine what its size is, and which C# type should be used to represent it? I am concerned it will vary by system hardware.
To my mind, you'd be better off looking at how the VES is defined and using a dedicated enum to model the types on the stack rather than C# visible types. Otherwise you're in for a rude surprise when we get to the floating point type.
From MS Partition I.pdf1, Section 12.1:
The CLI model uses an evaluation stack [...] However, the CLI supports only a subset of these types in its operations upon values stored on its evaluation stack—
int32,int64, andnative int. In addition, the CLI supports an internal data type to represent floating-point values on the internal evaluation stack. The size of the internal data type is implementation-dependent.
So those, as well as things like references are the things you should track, and I'd recommend you do that with an explicit model of the VES Stack using its terms.