What kind of memory semantics govern array assignment in c#?

Question

Given the following: byte[] sData; and a function declared as private byte[] construct_command()

if I were to then assign the resul

Answer 1

The assignment will simply assign the sData to reference the instance returned by construct_command. No copying of data will occur.

In general, the CLR breaks the world down into 2 types

• Value Types: This is anything that derives from System.ValueType. Assignment between values of these types happens by value and essentially results in a copy of the values between locations
• Reference Types: Anything else. Assignment between values of these types simply causes the location to reference a different object in memory. No copying of values occurs

Arrays are reference types in the CLR and hence do not cause a copying of the underlying value.