What does runtime implementation of interace for System.Array class mean in .Net?

Question

[...] the Array class implements the System.Collections.Generic.IList<T>, System.Collections.Generic.ICollection<T>, and System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable<T> generic interfaces. The implementations are provided to arrays at run time, and therefore are not visible to the documentation build tools.

Is this available to c# developers. I mean can I provide run time implementation to any interface on a class?

The documentation can only take you this far, and if you do want to dig further, read the source code, https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/blob/master/src/mscorlib/src/System/Array.cs — Lex Li, Nov 18 '17 at 03:48

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 18 '17 at 04:05

2

Yes, arrays are special and behave exactly as linked documentation says.

No, you can't add arbitrary (or even specific) interfaces to classes at run-time unless you are creating your own implementation of CLR.

Note that there are many ways to mimic behavior of adding interfaces like extension methods or wrapping objects with proxy classes but there is no true way to add interface to a class dynamically.

answered Nov 18 '17 at 04:05

Alexei Levenkov

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Thanks for the explanation. So, this dynamic interface implementation is CLR built in logic and only works for array types. – Raghav Boorgapally Nov 18 '17 at 05:05

What does runtime implementation of interace for System.Array class mean in .Net?

1 Answers1