Re: Microsoft.net (#C)

[Jeremy Bettis]

On Thu, Oct 05, 2000 at 03:04:51PM -0700, Lyndon Tremblay wrote:
> I actually had this same thoughts... I'm not sure on much of the 
> language-transparent
> VM, but current languages (VB, C++, C#, blah blah) don't have any runtime type
> binding and messaging at all.. so I'm sortof doubtful if the common .NET 
> runtime
> has even an ability to do this... in a compatible way, of course... 
> Interesting...

VB uses the Dispatch interface to COM, which is completly runtime driven.  I
am sure that all of this .NET stuff is just COM dispatch.  MS never invents
something new, they just change the name and the color.

Dispatch works like this:

There are two main calls, one returns the DISPID for a given name, and the
other is the Invoke call, which takes a DISPID and a variable size list of
arguments (as variants).  Now, if you want to know the number and types of
the expected variables, you use the ITypeLibrary interface.  The type library
allows you to iterate through all methods and properties and returns the
number of arguments, the names of the arguments, and the types.  But the type
library is optional, so not every object has one.

-- 
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