The Common Language Runtime (CLR) is the virtual machine component of Microsoft's .NET framework and is responsible for managing the execution of .NET programs. In a process known as Just-in-time compilation, the compiled code is converted into machine instructions that, in turn, are executed by the computer's CPU. The CLR provides additional services including memory management, type safety and exception handling. All programs written for the .NET framework, regardless of programming language, are executed by the CLR. It provides exception handling, garbage collection and thread management. CLR is common to all versions of the .NET framework.
The CLR is Microsoft's implementation of the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) standard.
Famous quotes containing the words common and/or language:
“We early arrive at the great discovery that there is one mind common to all individual men: that what is individual is less than what is universal ... that error, vice and disease have their seat in the superficial or individual nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“While you are divided from us by geographical lines, which are imaginary, and by a language which is not the same, you have not come to an alien people or land. In the realm of the heart, in the domain of the mind, there are no geographical lines dividing the nations.”
—Anna Howard Shaw (1847–1919)