Module IR

Provides classes that describe the Intermediate Representation (IR) of the program.

The IR is a representation of the semantics of the program, with very little dependence on the syntax that was used to write the program. For example, in C++, the statements i += 1;, i++, and ++i all have the same semantic effect, but appear in the AST as three different types of Expr node. In the IR, all three statements are broken down into a sequence of fundamental operations similar to:

r1(int*) = VariableAddress[i]  // Compute the address of variable `i`
r2(int) = Load &:r1, m0  // Load the value of `i`
r3(int) = Constant[1]  // An integer constant with the value `1`
r4(int) = Add r2, r3  // Add `1` to the value of `i`
r5(int) = Store &r1, r4  // Store the new value back into the variable `i`

This allows IR-based analysis to focus on the fundamental operations, rather than having to be concerned with the various ways of expressing those operations in source code.

The key classes in the IR are:

IRFunction - Contains the IR for an entire function definition, including all of that function’s Instructions, IRBlocks, and IRVariables.
Instruction - A single operation in the IR. An instruction specifies the operation to be performed, the operands that produce the inputs to that operation, and the type of the result of the operation. Control flows from an Instruction to one of a set of successor Instructions.
Operand - An input value of an Instruction. All inputs of an Instruction are explicitly represented as Operands, even if the input was implicit in the source code. An Operand has a link to the Instruction that consumes its value (its “use”) and a link to the Instruction that produces its value (its “definition”).
IRVariable - A variable accessed by the IR for a particular function. An IRVariable is created for each variable directly accessed by the function. In addition, IRVariables are created to represent certain temporary storage locations that do not have explicitly declared variables in the source code, such as the return value of the function.
IRBlock - A “basic block” in the control flow graph of a function. An IRBlock contains a sequence of instructions such that control flow can only enter the block at the first instruction, and can only leave the block from the last instruction.
IRType - The type of a value accessed in the IR. Unlike the Type class in the AST, IRType is language-neutral. For example, in C++, unsigned int, char32_t, and wchar_t might all be represented as the IRType uint4, a four-byte unsigned integer.

Import path

import semmle.code.cpp.ir.implementation.raw.IR

Imports

EdgeKind	Provides classes that specify the conditions under which control flows along a given edge.
IRBlock	Provides classes describing basic blocks in the IR of a function.
IRFunction	Provides the class `IRFunction`, which represents the Intermediate Representation for the definition of a function.
IRType	Minimal, language-neutral type system for the IR.
IRVariable	Provides classes that represent variables accessed by the IR.
Instruction	Provides classes that represent the individual instructions in the IR for a function.
MemoryAccessKind	Provides classes that describe how a particular `Instruction` or its operands access memory.
Operand	Provides classes that represent the input values of IR instructions.

Classes

IRPropertyProvider

A class that provides additional properties to be dumped for IR instructions and blocks when using the PrintIR module. Libraries that compute additional facts about IR elements can extend the single instance of this class to specify the additional properties computed by the library.