CLR Processing

The CLR is an unmanaged application written in Visual C++ which manages the execution of .NET applications.

Amongst the things it does are the following:

1. It takes the intermediate language (IL) produced by the C#, VB or other .NET compiler, and converts it 'on the fly' to native code for the underlying platform. This process is known as 'just in time' (JIT) compilation.

2. It manages memory for the .NET application, including allocating heap memory for new objects and deallocation of memory for old objects. The latter is known as 'garbage collection'.

3. It checks that code is 'type safe' before it is allowed to run so that it won't interfere with other running processes or other .NET applications running under the same process (using a mechanism known as 'application domains').

4. It enforces security by checking that the code has the necessary permissions to carry out certain operations.

5. It manages exceptions thrown whilst the managed code is executing.

6. It manages the creation and synchronization of threads.