5.22 Interoperating with Unmanaged Code

The .NET runtime supports bidirectional interop with unmanaged code via COM, COM+, and native Win32 API calls. The FCL provides a set of classes and attributes that support this, including precise control of managed object lifetime, and the option of creating user-defined custom marshallers to handle specific interop situations (see Chapter 17 and Chapter 18).

For more information, see the following namespaces:

System.Runtime.InteropServices
System.Runtime.InteropServices.CustomMarshalers
System.Runtime.InteropServices.Expando

An important related type in another namespace is System.Buffer.