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I'm an expert C# 3 / .NET 3.5 programmer looking to start doing some runtime codegen using System.Reflection.Emit.DynamicMethod. I'd love to move up to the next level by becoming intimately familiar with IL.
Any pointers (pun intended)?
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Both the terms are similar but with following difference: CIL – Common Intermediate Language – is the term used in the International Standard. MSIL – Microsoft Intermediate Language – is the product term for the Microsoft implementation of that standard.
CLR provides the services and runtime environment to the MSIL code. Internally CLR includes the JIT(Just-In-Time) compiler which converts the MSIL code to machine code which further executed by CPU. CLR also uses the . NET Framework class libraries.
The Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL), also known as the Common Intermediate Language (CIL) is a set of instructions that are platform independent and are generated by the language-specific compiler from the source code.
CIL instructions are executed by a CLI-compatible runtime environment such as the Common Language Runtime. Languages which target the CLI compile to CIL. CIL is object-oriented, stack-based bytecode. Runtimes typically just-in-time compile CIL instructions into native code.
In addition to Darren's answer, I'd suggest picking or inventing a toy language, and writing a simple compiler for it. Pick something that requires little parsing, like BF or a stack-based language, and you'll find that writing a compiler is actually simpler than it seems.
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The best way to learn it, is to write something you understand, then look at the IL it created. Also, depending on what you are doing, you can use expression trees instead of emitting IL, and then when you compile the expression trees, those smart guys at microsoft create the IL for ya.
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