Simple Sample

Chapter 1

Simple Sample

This chapter offers a general overview of the MSIL assembly language (ILAsm). (MSIL stands for Microsoft intermediate language, which will soon be discussed in this chapter.) We’ll review a relatively simple program written in ILAsm, and then I’ll suggest some modifications that illustrate how the concepts and elements of Microsoft .NET programming are expressed in this language.

This chapter does not teach you how to write programs in ILAsm. But it should help you to understand what the ILAsm compiler and the IL Disassembler (ILDASM) do and to use that understanding to analyze the internal structure of a .NET-based program with the help of these ubiquitous tools. You’ll also learn some intriguing facts about the mysterious affairs that take place behind the scenes, within the common language runtime—intriguing enough, I hope, to prompt you to read the rest of the book.

	For your sake and mine, I’ll abbreviate IL assembly language as ILAsm throughout this book. Don’t confuse it with ILASM, which is used as the abbreviation for the ILAsm compiler in the .NET documentation.