VB Compiled or Interpreted?

[bascule]

.NET applications can be compiled ahead of time to native code, although they'll still need the .NET runtime

[doG]

.NET applications can be compiled ahead of time to native code, although they'll still need the .NET runtime

 

They're not really native machine code then are they? What do you suppose you'd get if you run such a compiled application through an x86 disassembler? I suspect it wouldn't be x86 instructions since it needs a runtime engine to execute.

[bascule]

They're not really native machine code then are they? What do you suppose you'd get if you run such a compiled application through an x86 disassembler? I suspect it wouldn't be x86 instructions since it needs a runtime engine to execute.

 

The instructions (in files that .NET developers have elected to compile ahead of time to native code) are in fact machine code, and the file format is just an extended form of the PE ".EXE" format used by most other ahead-of-time compiled executable code on Windows. However, it has special sections which require the .NET Common Language Runtime in order to function. Also the CIL bytecode is there in case you want to run the executable on a platform other than the one the developers elected to create native code for.