How is null represented in .NET

Question

I was having a conversation with a co-worker and the subject of null came up. He was telling me that in .NET behind the scenes it is just a really small number. I always tho

Answer 1

It's 0.

Snip from ldnull in ECMA-335 spec:

It might be thought that ldnull is redundant: why not use ldc.i4.0 or ldc.i8.0 instead? The answer is that ldnull provides a size-agnostic null – analogous to an ldc.i instruction, which does not exist. However, even if CIL were to include an ldc.i instruction it would still benefit verification algorithms to retain the ldnull instruction because it makes type tracking easier.