Application #70. Reflection

Reflection is the process of interrogating an assembly at run time to discover information about the types that the assembly contains. You can find out all kinds of information, such as what members a type has; the type accessibility of those members; and the number, type, and order of any parameters a member might require. Development tools and configuration utilities often make use of reflection to display this type metadata to users. Visual Studio .NET, for example, uses reflection to display the member signature ToolTips and member drop-down lists while you code. The .NET Framework provides many classes for retrieving assembly and type metadata. This topic examines some of these classes.

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