Working with arrays, structs, and pointers

For almost all applications, basic types such as INTEGER are not sufficient. For example, to represent mathematical objects such as a matrix or a complex number, you must construct new data types based on existing data types. These new data types are generally called aggregate or composite types.

Arrays are a sequence of elements of the same type. In LLVM, arrays are always static: the number of elements is constant. The tinylang type of ARRAY [10] OF INTEGER, or the C type of long[10], is expressed in IR as follows:

[10 x i64]

Structures are composites of different types. In programming languages, they are often expressed with named members. For example, in tinylang, a structure is written as RECORD x, y: REAL; color: INTEGER; END; and the same structure in C is struct { float x, y; long color; };. In LLVM IR, only the type names are listed:

{ float, float, i64 }

To access a member, a numerical index is used. Like arrays,...