Special Types

Opaque Types

Opaque types are built-in types that have target-defined representation in memory. This includes the bit representation, the underlying type, and characteristics such as size and alignment. Other shader languages may refer to these as opaque handle types, opaque descriptor types, resource object types, or resource data types.

The full list of opaque types supported by Slang can be found in the core module reference. Some important examples:

• Texture types such as Texture2D<T>, TextureCubeArray<T>, DepthTexture2D<T>, and RWTexture2DMS<T>
• Combined texture-sampler types such as Sampler2D<T> and Sampler2DShadow<T>
• Sampler state types: SamplerState and SamplerComparisonState
• Buffer types like ConstantBuffer<T> and StructuredBuffer<T>
• Parameter blocks: ParameterBlock<T>

Slang makes no guarantees about layout rules or type conversion rules of opaque types.

TODO: Add other special types