CLR optimization question

[Daniel Billingsley]

Suppose you have a base class with one protected property and one method.

When you instantiate a derived class, obviously there needs to be a copy of
the property specific to that instantiation in memory.

But there *could* be one copy of the method for all the derived objects to
reference. Or does the compiler simply create a class with all the base
class code included and that's what the CLR creates at runtime?

 

[Mattias Sjögren]

Daniel,

When you instantiate a derived class, obviously there needs to be a copy of
the property specific to that instantiation in memory.

Not really. Each instance has its own copy of any instance fields that
you may use as a backing store for the property, but the property code
is shared by all instances.

But there *could* be one copy of the method for all the derived objects to
reference.

Yes, only a single copy of the code is needed.

Or does the compiler simply create a class with all the base
class code included and that's what the CLR creates at runtime?

No.



Mattias

 

[Daniel Billingsley]

Thanks for the response.

Not really. Each instance has its own copy of any instance fields that
you may use as a backing store for the property, but the property code
is shared by all instances.

Yeah, I really was thinking field but said property. Doh!

No.

That's pretty cool.