Possibility of language data type not mapped to shipped .NET Framework?
- by John K
Does anybody know of a managed programming language implemented on .NET that contains a specialized data type that is not mapped through to the Common Type System/FCL/BCL or one that does not have a shipped .NET equivalent (e.g. shipped standard types like System.String, System.Int32)?
This question would likely come from the perspective of someone porting a compiler (although I'm not doing that).
Is it as simple as the language creating a new data type outside the BCL/FCL for its specialized type? If so does this hinder interoperability between programming languages that are otherwise accustomed to mapping all their built-in data types to what's in the BCL/FCL, like Visual Basic and C#?
I can imagine this situation might come about if an obscure language compiler of some kind is ported to .NET for which there is no direct mapping of one of its implicit data types to the shipped Framework.
How is this situation supported or allowed in general? What would be the expectation of the compiler and the Common Language Runtime?