18. The computer-readable medium of claim 17 wherein the size represents a size of a machine representation of a value.
17. A computer-readable medium storing a software program thereon, the program comprising computer executable instructions for implementing a method for representing type information for a typed intermediate language using a class hierarchy for representing different type classifications, the method comprising: defining a programming class of the class hierarchy as ‘PrimType’, wherein the programming class represents primitive type information for the typed intermediate language; associating a size with instances of the ‘PrimType’ class, wherein the size is settable to represent an actual size of instances of the ‘PrimType’ class, settable to represent a symbolic size of instances of the ‘PrimType’ class, and settable to represent an unknown size of instances of the ‘PrimType’ class, and wherein the actual size and the symbolic size are defined as a number of bits; and associating a kind of type with instances of the ‘PrimType’ class; wherein the class ‘PrimType’ represents a plurality of types comprising at least an unknown type, wherein the unknown type can represent any type, wherein the unknown type represents a lack of all type information, wherein a compiler drops type information during compilation by changing a known type to the unknown type, in the typed intermediate language, during a stage of lowering, wherein the unknown type is set independently of the size, and wherein the ‘PrimType’ class supports an unknown type with an unknown size.