5.8 Reflection and Metadata

The .NET runtime depends heavily on the existence of metadata and the ability to inspect and manipulate it dynamically. The FCL exposes this via a set of abstract classes that mirror the significant elements of an application (assemblies, modules, types, and members ) and provide support for creating instances of FCL types and new types on the fly (see Chapter 13).

For more information, see the following namespaces:

 System.Reflection System.Reflection.Emit 

Important related types in other namespaces include System.Type , System.Activator , and System.AppDomain .