Abstract: A method of providing enhanced prompts in a visual editing environment is described. In an embodiment, these prompts may assist a programmer by identifying a set of possible decomposition cases following a decomposition statement relating to a variable. These possible decomposition cases are determined based on the variable's type. These possible cases are then refined based on existing decomposition constructs within the code to provide the user with a visual prompt of only those possible cases which have not already been considered. The process may be repeated as the programmer continues to write code such that the list of possible decomposition cases is iteratively refined.

Abstract: A verification module evaluates intermediate language code to verify that the code is type safe before passing the code for execution. Code that is not deemed type safe can cause execution errors, corrupt the runtime environment in which the code is executing, or cause unauthorized access to protected system resources. As such, the verification module protects a computer system from intentional or inadvertent breaches of the computer system's defenses. The verification module verifies the type safety of intermediate language code that supports significant high-level language constructs prohibited by verification modules in the prior art. One exemplary verification module verifies intermediate language code that includes one or more reference-based parameter, such as a pointer (or reference), a value class containing pointers, a RefAny parameter, or a nested pointer.