Microsoft® Visual C#® .NET 2003 Unleashed

Memory and Class Management in the Common Language Runtime

This section of the chapter deals with how the Common Language Runtime manages memory, and how you can make some adjustments in your code to be more accommodating of the Common Language Runtime's memory manager. You will be introduced to the concepts of boxing and unboxing and how those concepts apply when dealing with collections and arrays. In addition, this section discusses string management, how the Common Language Runtime deals with strings, and what you can do to increase string performance.

Boxing and Unboxing

Boxing and unboxing refer to the ability to convert between value types and reference types. A value type is a simple type such as an integer or a decimal or a float. A ...