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Showing posts from December, 2009

sizeof vs Marshal.SizeOf !!!

There are two facilities in C# to determine the size of a type - sizeof operator and Marshal.SizeOf method. Let me discuss what they offer and how they differ. Pardon me if I happen to ramble a bit. Before we settle the difference between sizeof and Marshal.SizeOf , let us discuss why would we want to compute the size of a variable or type. Other than academic, one typical reason to know the size of a type (in a production code) would be allocate memory for an array of items; typically done while using malloc . Unlike in C++ (or unmanaged world), computing the size of a type definitely has no such use in C# (managed world). Within the managed application, size does not matter; since there are types provided by the CLR for creating\managing fixed size and variable size (typed) arrays. And as per MSDN, the size cannot be computed accurately. Does that mean we don't need to compute the size of a type at all when working in the CLR world? Obviously no, else I would