Struct memory hack to overlap object reference - Is it possible?

Question

I\'m guessing the answer to this is going to be \"It\'s not possible, switch to C++\". But I thought I\'d throw it out there anyway.

I\'m dealing with a massive binary t

Answer 1

I don't know if this is faster in practice, but it has fewer memory lookups in managed code.

(There might be more lookups in the CLR itself that I'm not aware of.)

That said, you can use GCHandle to overlay managed references with unmanaged data:

[StructLayout(LayoutKind.Explicit)]
public struct Data
{
    [FieldOffset(0)]
    public IntPtr NativeData;
    [FieldOffset(0)]
    public GCHandle Handle;
}


Data data = ...;
((YourClass)data.Handle.Target).Blah();