Types

lovm2 embraces dynamic typing. The most basic ones are Bool, Int, Float, String.

Nil is the default return type of functions that do not have return values. You can also use it to mark the absence of a value.

Ref can wrap any other value and implement a shared mutable location as such.

Complex Types

List and Dict are a bit more complicated, because they need to store other values. As such, they support the contains, len, get, set and delete methods.

These types also utilize Ref heavily. If you use the standard lovm2 functionality for generating programs, you will always implicitly work with a Ref to the corresponding data. The virtual machine also ensures that every value being stored inside these types is itself wrapped up in a reference. This is required for the implementation of slices. The Box instruction realizes this functionality.

Another special value kind is Any. This type is used for allowing external shared object modules to pass their custom Rust structures into the VM.

Conversion

The Conv instruction is able to convert data according to the following rules:

¹ implies parsing overhead