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The current tag info for :

IL (Intermediate Language) is low level language used by Microsoft .NET Framework and Mono.

:

Common Intermediate Language (CIL, pronounced either "sil" or "kil") (formerly called Microsoft Intermediate Language or MSIL) is the lowest-level human-readable programming language defined by the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) specification and is used by the .NET Framework and Mono.
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This really looks like they refer to the same thing, and as has fewer tagged questions and less information, I propose to make it a synonym of .

Edit: There is also , which represents any intermediate language:

An intermediate language, in compiler design, is a low-level language that typically resembles an idealized assembly language, often a textual representation of bytecode for a virtual machine. For .NET's CIL, use the [cil] tag.

Edit #2:
There's only one vote left on the synonym page. Please vote!

Edit #3:
The synonym was finally approved. Thank you for all your support!

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    You are welcome to have all the il-questions merged into cil. But don't make it a synonym, there are other intermediate languages... Commented Apr 19, 2015 at 21:59
  • 1
    @Deduplicator Of course there are other intermediate languages (there is c-intermediate-language tag, for example), but the il tag only applies to specific IL used by .NET and Mono.
    – IS4
    Commented Apr 20, 2015 at 14:12
  • That might be so. Just merging all the questions tagged with the generic il into cil would take care of it though. Commented Apr 20, 2015 at 14:28
  • @Deduplicator Merge, whatever. Just keep one tag for one thing.
    – IS4
    Commented Apr 20, 2015 at 14:30
  • And today, three months later, still nothing was done about that :(
    – ForNeVeR
    Commented Jul 20, 2015 at 7:06
  • @ForNeVeR I don't have high enough reputation.
    – IS4
    Commented Jul 20, 2015 at 19:09

1 Answer 1

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While CIL is the proper technical term, it doesn't get much actual usage in practice. Certainly not in answers, most everybody uses IL. At least partly inspired by the tools that work with IL, their names start with il (like ilasm and ildasm).

The only reason the tag has more posts is because somebody once made a synonym for it. The predecessor of CIL, it actually gets used more often.

So logical choice is to make a synonym. Also avoids the tricky problem of IL not being completely .NET-centric. A C++ compiler also uses IL for example. Not that this triggers a lot of questions :)

Some people are likely to lose badges after such a merge, not sure if that is ever a concern. Doing nothing is certainly an option btw, the existence of both tags never bothered anybody that answers questions about it. They are contextual tags.

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  • Yes, ms is good in relying on people to guess it's always whatever one they prefer today... Which doesn't mean doing the same for SO is all that a great idea. Commented Apr 20, 2015 at 14:26
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    For any il (not just .NET one), there is tag 'intermediate-language'. Why not prefer 'cil' to be the tag? It is the official name and moreover, simple 'il' might be misleading (while it refers to .NET one, as you see, it has already misleaded people here to think it refers to any intermediate language). And having both tags bothers me, as I have to put both tags to my questions to ensure people who follow one of them get noticed, and sometimes, there is no tag space left for other useful tags.
    – IS4
    Commented Apr 20, 2015 at 14:34

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