How Virtual Dispatch Works
At first sight, virtual dispatch might look like a bit of magic. The compiler did know about a static type, yet a virtual method override on the runtime type is considered for execution. How does that work? The answer lies in the runtime facilities provided for method calls. A set of different instructions exist to call methods, two of which are used by the C# compiler. One is call, the other is callvirt. From the name, you can already infer the task of the second (although the C# compiler uses it for other purposes, as you will see).
Consider the following piece of code, given our Shape and Circle classes we defined earlier. Observe how the call to Radius involves a nonvirtual member, whereas the call to Area should ...
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