Common Language Runtime Framework

                    Common Language Runtime Framework:

• As part of the Microsoft  .NET Framework, the Common Language Runtime (CLR) is the programming (Virtual Machine component) that manages the execution of programs written in any language that uses the .NET Framework, for example C#, VB.Net, F# and so on.

• Programmers write code in any language, including VB.Net, C# and F# yhen they compile their programs into an intermediate form of code called Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) in a portable execution (PE) file that can be managed and used by the CLR and then the CLR converts it into machine code  will be executed by the processor.

• The information about the environment, programming language, its version and what class libraries will be used for this code are stored in the form of metadata with the compiler that tells the CLR how to handle this code.

• The CLR allows an instance of a class written in one language to call a method of the class written in another language.

Functions of the CLR:

• Convert code into CLI.
• Exception handling
• Type safety
• Memory management (using the Garbage Collector)
• Security
• Improved performance
• Language independency
• Platform independency
• Architecture independency 

Components of the CLR

• Class Loader (Each assembly has its own class loader to load types from that assembly)
  
  Used to load all classes at run time.
   
• Microsoft Intermediate Language(MSIL- Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL) is a language used as the output of a number of compilers (C#, VB, .NET, and so forth)) to Native code
  
  The Just In Time (JTI) compiler will convert MSIL code into native code.
   
• Code Manager
  
  It manages the code at run time.
   
• Garbage Collector
  
  It manages the memory. Collect all unused objects and deallocate them to reduce memory.
   
• Thread Support
  
  It supports multithreading of our application.
   
• Exception Handler
  
  It handles exceptions at run time.