Common Language Runtime (CLR)

The Common Language Runtime is the first main component of .Net Framework. The Common Language Runtime main features are to manage memory, thread execution, code execution, code safety verification and other services. CLR is an execution environment for the program code which is defined by CLI. Basically, CLR lies between operating systems and applications which are written in .Net languages. Some of the features of CLR are:

• Automatic Memory Management – The CLR provides the garbage collection where the lifetime of the objects is managed by garbage collection only and it is known as managed data.
• Platform Independence – We can build program in any language which targets the CLR, while compiling the program the compiler translates the code into an intermediate language which is CPU independent. It can be executed from any platform which supports the .Net CLR.
• Security management – It can be achieved through code access Security model. In this, model CLR implements restrictions on managed code with the use of objects called permissions. It specifies what the code can access instead of specifying who can access the resources.
• Language interoperability – The ability of an application to communicate with another application written in a different programming language. It helps in the reusability of code.