Common Language Runtime (CLR)

The Common Language Runtime (CLR) is programming that manages the execution of programs written in any of several supported languages, allowing them to share common object-oriented classes written in any of the languages. It is a part of Microsoft's .NET Framework. The CLR is somewhat comparable to the Java virtual machine that Sun Microsystems provides for running programs compiled from the Java language. Microsoft refers to its CLR as a "managed execution environment." A program compiled for the CLR does not need a language-specific execution environment and can easily be moved to and run on any system with Windows 2000 or Windows XP.

Programmers writing in any of Visual Basic , Visual C++ , or C# compile their programs into an intermediate form of code called Common Intermediate Language (CIL) in a portable execution file that can then be managed and executed by the CLR. The programmer and the environment specify descriptive information about the program when it is compiled and the information is stored with the compiled program as Metadata . Metadata, stored in the compiled program, tells the CLR what language was used, its version and what class libraries will be needed by the program. The CLR allows an instance of a class written in one language to call a method of a class written in another language. It also provides garbage collecting (returning unneeded memory to the computer), exception handling and debugging services.