ii.9.8-signatures-and-binding.md

II.9.8 Signatures and binding

Members (fields and methods) of a generic type are referenced in CIL instructions using a metadata token, which specifies an entry in the MemberRef table (§II.22.25). Abstractly, the reference consists of two parts:

1. The type in which the member is declared, in this case, an instantiation of the generic type definition. For example: IComparer`1<String>.

2. The name and generic (uninstantiated) signature of the member. For example: int32 Compare(!0,!0).

It is possible for distinct members to have identical types when instantiated, but which can be distinguished by MemberRef.

[Example:

.class public C`2<S,T> {
  .field string f
  .field !0 f
  .method instance void m(!0 x) {...}
  .method instance void m(!1 x) {...}
  .method instance void m(string x) {...}
}

The closed type C`2<string,string> is valid: it has three methods called m, all with the same parameter type; and two fields called f with the same type. They are all distinguished through the MemberRef encoding described above:

string C`2<string, string>::f
!0  C<string, string>::f
void C`2<string, string>::m(!0)
void C`2<string, string>::m(!1)
void C`2<string, string>::m(string)

The way in which a source language might resolve this kind of overloading is left to each individual language. For example, many might disallow such overloads. end example]