Object-Oriented Programming with Visual Basic .NET

2.7. Intermediate Language

VB is not compiled directly into machine code. It is first compiled to a CPU-independent language called Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL, or simply IL). You might think this compilation is a throwback to VB's early years as an interpreted language, but the situation is not so grim. The code is not interpreted; eventually, it is converted to machine code at runtime by a just-in-time (JIT) compiler. This happens during execution, as code is needed. Then it is cached as machine code until the process terminates.

The .NET Framework SDK ships with an IL disassembler called ILDASM, which allows you to view the IL produced by the VB compiler (or any .NET compiler, for that matter). This feature can be very useful if you want to see how something in the .NET class library was implemented or to determine what classes are available in a particular library. The hello.dll assembly can be examined by running the IL Disassembler (ildasm.exe) from the command line:

C:\>ildasm hello.dll

From the ILDASM dialog, you can view the manifest and navigate every namespace within the given assembly. As shown in Figure 2-4, ILDASM presents a tree view that allows inspection of the manifest, the various namespaces, classes, and methods contained within the assembly. Example 2-3 contains the entire IL listing for hello.dll, which was produced by selecting File/Dump from the menu.

Figure 2-4. The ILDASM dialog

Example 2-3. The IL dump of hello.dll

// Microsoft ...