<div class="doc_text">
-<p>LLVM uses three different forms of identifiers, for different
-purposes:</p>
+ <p>LLVM identifiers come in two basic types: global and local. Global
+ identifiers (functions, global variables) begin with the @ character. Local
+ identifiers (register names, types) begin with the % character. Additionally,
+ there are three different formats for identifiers, for different purposes:
<ol>
- <li>Named values are represented as a string of characters with a '%' prefix.
- For example, %foo, %DivisionByZero, %a.really.long.identifier. The actual
- regular expression used is '<tt>%[a-zA-Z$._][a-zA-Z$._0-9]*</tt>'.
+ <li>Named values are represented as a string of characters with their prefix.
+ For example, %foo, @DivisionByZero, %a.really.long.identifier. The actual
+ regular expression used is '<tt>[%@][a-zA-Z$._][a-zA-Z$._0-9]*</tt>'.
Identifiers which require other characters in their names can be surrounded
- with quotes. In this way, anything except a <tt>"</tt> character can be used
- in a name.</li>
+ with quotes. In this way, anything except a <tt>"</tt> character can
+ be used in a named value.</li>
- <li>Unnamed values are represented as an unsigned numeric value with a '%'
- prefix. For example, %12, %2, %44.</li>
+ <li>Unnamed values are represented as an unsigned numeric value with their
+ prefix. For example, %12, @2, %44.</li>
<li>Constants, which are described in a <a href="#constants">section about
constants</a>, below.</li>
</ol>
-<p>LLVM requires that values start with a '%' sign for two reasons: Compilers
+<p>LLVM requires that values start with a prefix for two reasons: Compilers
don't need to worry about name clashes with reserved words, and the set of
reserved words may be expanded in the future without penalty. Additionally,
unnamed identifiers allow a compiler to quickly come up with a temporary
'<tt><a href="#i_ret">ret</a></tt>', etc...), for primitive type names ('<tt><a
href="#t_void">void</a></tt>', '<tt><a href="#t_primitive">i32</a></tt>', etc...),
and others. These reserved words cannot conflict with variable names, because
-none of them start with a '%' character.</p>
+none of them start with a prefix character ('%' or '@').</p>
<p>Here is an example of LLVM code to multiply the integer variable
'<tt>%X</tt>' by 8:</p>