21. The Common Language Infrastructure

One of the first items C# programmers encounter beyond the syntax is the context under which a C# program executes. This chapter discusses the underpinnings of how C# handles memory allocation and deallocation, type checking, interoperability with other languages, cross-platform execution, and support for programming metadata. In other words, this chapter investigates the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) on which C# relies both at compile time and during execution. It covers the execution engine that governs a C# program at runtime and how C# fits into a broader set of languages that are governed by the same execution engine. Because of C#’s close ties with this infrastructure, most of the features that come with the infrastructure are made available to C#.