Author : Joshua Trupin
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code level—either for performance considerations or to use old-style, unmodernized APIs from other programs. I've discussed ways to use APIs and COM components from your C# program. C# lets you declare unsafe classes and methods that contain pointers, structs, and static arrays. These methods won't be type-safe, but they will execute within the managed space so you don't have to marshal boundaries between safe and unsafe code.
These unsafe features are integrated with the COM+ EE and code access security in COM+. This means that a developer can pin an object so that the garbage collector will pass over them when it's doing its work. (Sort of like a mezuzah for your code.) Unsafe code won't be executed outside a fully trusted environment. Programmers can even turn off garbage collection while an unsafe method is executing.
C# was announced in June and will be part of the upcoming Visual Studio .NET suite. A compiler is expected to be available later this year, in advance of the release of the next generation of Visual Studio®.
Joshua Trupin is the technical editor for MSDN Magazine. He has written numerous articles for MSJ and MIND, the predecessors to MSDN Magazine, as well as a book, Hoop Stats: The Basketball Abstract.
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