How extension methods are implemented internally

Question

How are extension methods implemented internally? I mean what happens when the compiler sees a declaration for an extension method and what happens at runtime when there is a call to an extension method.

Is reflection involved? Or when you have an extension method is its code injected in the target class type metadata with some additional flags noting that this is an extension method and then the CLR knows how to handle that?

So in general, what happens under the hood?

Answer 1

As already have said by other colleagues it is just a static method. It is all about the compiler we can say that CLR even have no idea about extension methods. You can try to check IL code ..

Here is an example

static class ExtendedString
{
    public static String TestMethod(this String str, String someParam)
    {
        return someParam;
    }
}

static void Main(string[] args)
{
    String str = String.Empty;
    Console.WriteLine(str.TestMethod("Hello World!!"));
    ........
}

And here is the IL code.

  IL_0001:  ldsfld     string [mscorlib]System.String::Empty
  IL_0006:  stloc.0
  IL_0007:  ldloc.0
  IL_0008:  ldstr      "Hello World!!"
  IL_000d:  call       string StringPooling.ExtendedString::TestMethod(string,
                                                                       string)
  IL_0012:  call       void [mscorlib]System.Console::WriteLine(string)
  IL_0017:  nop

As you can see it is just a call of static method. The method is not added to the class, but compiler makes it look like that. And on reflection layer the only difference you can see is that CompilerServices.ExtensionAttribute is added.

Answer 2

extension methods are converted to static functions.In other words,They are syntactic sugar for static functions.

Answer 3

I dont think that reflection is involved in extension methods. The extension method is handled in the same way like you write a static helper function in a helper class, the only difference is that compiler does it for you.