06 Feb 2024




Intermediate

Reflection and dynamic are both features in C# that enable dynamic programming scenarios, but they serve different purposes and operate at different levels of abstraction.

  1. Reflection:

    • Reflection is a feature that allows you to inspect and manipulate metadata (information about types and members) of types at runtime.
    • It provides classes and methods in the System.Reflection namespace to examine and interact with types, members, and attributes dynamically.
    • Reflection is primarily used for tasks such as loading assemblies dynamically, inspecting type information, accessing and invoking members dynamically, and working with custom attributes.
    • Reflection is more low-level and involves direct manipulation of metadata and type information.
  2. Dynamic:

    • The dynamic keyword in C# is used to declare variables whose types are not known until runtime. It defers type checking and member resolution to runtime, providing flexibility in scenarios where static typing is too restrictive.
    • With dynamic, you can perform operations on objects without knowing their types at compile time. Method calls, property accesses, and other operations are resolved dynamically at runtime.
    • dynamic is more high-level and abstracts away the details of type resolution and member access, making it easier to work with dynamic types and interoperate with dynamic languages.
    • Unlike reflection, which deals with metadata and type information, dynamic deals with the behavior of objects at runtime.

In summary, while both reflection and dynamic enable dynamic programming in C#, they operate at different levels of abstraction and serve different purposes. Reflection is used for inspecting and manipulating metadata of types and members at runtime, while dynamic allows for dynamic typing and late binding, enabling more flexible programming in scenarios where the types are determined dynamically.

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