Essential C# 8.0, 7th Edition

23. Platform Interoperability and Unsafe Code

C# has great capabilities, especially when you consider that the underlying framework is entirely managed. Sometimes, however, you need to escape out of all the safety that C# provides and step back into the world of memory addresses and pointers. C# supports this action in two significant ways. The first option is to go through Platform Invoke (P/Invoke) and calls into APIs exposed by unmanaged dynamic link libraries (DLLs). The second way is through unsafe code, which enables access to memory pointers and addresses.

An illustration of the two ways by which C sharp language supports platform interoperability ...