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Glebka
Glebka

Reputation: 1668

Object.GetType() source code

How is object.GetType() implemented in .NET?

Upvotes: 5

Views: 886

Answers (3)

ilharp
ilharp

Reputation: 57

I've found an article that explains how Object.GetType() works in great detail:

How does Object.GetType() really work?

The source code mentioned in this article is now open source in dotnet/runtime on GitHub.

Upvotes: 2

CodesInChaos
CodesInChaos

Reputation: 108790

It's implemented in the runtime itself, so there is no C# source-code for it.

[MethodImpl(MethodImplOptions.InternalCall)]
public extern Type GetType();

MethodImplOptions.InternalCall is used for functions which have a "magical" implementation inside the runtime itself.

For the normal .net implementation you won't find it at all since its closed source. With Rotor or Mono you'll most likely find in their c/c++ runtime source-code.

I assume it just uses the marker pointer at the beginning of each instance to get to the class information which then contains a field to get to the managed Type instance, possibly creating it on demand.

Upvotes: 8

Marc Gravell
Marc Gravell

Reputation: 1062600

I suspect this is implemented as part of the engine itself, so it is entirely possible that the "source code" for this is c++ and not published (except perhaps for mono etc).

Either way: I can't think of a scenario where you would need this... If you want to know how the type metadata is associated with the object, look at the CLI spec - ECMA335

Upvotes: 1

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