Accelerated C# 2008

reflection. Typically, you start with a System.Type object when you reflect upon types in the assem-

bly. You can get hold of one of these type instances by using the typeof keyword in C#, by calling

System.Assembly.GetType(), and a few other ways. Generally, the typeof keyword is more efficient

because it is computed at compile time, whereas GetType(), although more flexible since you can

pass it an arbitrary string, is executed at run time. Once you have a type object, you can find out if it

is a class, an interface, a struct, or so on, what methods it has, and the number and types of fields it

contains.

■Note If you’re wondering, “Why metadata?”, ...