Microsoft® .NET Kick Start

Understanding Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL)

The concept of having an intermediate code has been used successfully by the Java programming environment. Java includes a concept of bytecodes that are then interpreted (or JIT compiled) on execution. MSIL is similar to Java bytecode; the main difference is that IL is always compiled into machine code before execution. The compilation process can be done manually or automatically by the runtime. MSIL implements the Common Intermediate Language (CIL), which is part of the ECMA CLR Specification. MSIL itself is an object-oriented language and includes support of standard object-oriented features such as abstraction, inheritance, polymorphism, exception handling, events, properties, fields, and ...