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  • Thread starter Thread starter Robert Dufour
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Robert Dufour

What is the meaning of the word marshal and unmarshal in plain english as
applied to an exe file?

Does it mean the application has started and ended?

Thanks for any help,
Happy new year,
Bob
 
From what I understand:

The marshaler essentially provides a bridge between the functionality of old
and new interfaces. Custom marshaling enables clients that you designed to
work with an old interface to also work with servers that only implement a
new interface. Custom marshaling also enables clients built to work with a
new interface to work with servers that expose the old interface.

Instead of using the interop marshaler, you can design a custom marshaler
for an interface that introduces different marshaling behavior or exposes
the interface to COM in a different way. By using a custom marshaler, you
can minimize the distinction between new .NET components and existing COM
components.

For example, suppose that you are developing a managed interface called
INew. When exposed to COM through a standard COM callable wrapper, the
interface has the same methods as the managed interface and uses the
marshaling rules built into the interop marshaler. Further suppose that a
well-known COM interface called IOld already provides the same functionality
as the INew interface. By introducing a custom marshaler, you can provide an
unmanaged implementation of IOld that simply delegates the calls to the
managed implementation of the INew interface. The custom marshaler
essentially acts as a bridge between the managed and unmanaged interfaces.

Note that custom marshalers are not invoked when calling from the managed
side to unmanaged side on a dispatch only interface.

Not a dumb question. I didn't know it either.
 
A teacher of mine always said

"The only dumb question is the question you have, and don`t ask"

regards

Michel
 
Robert Dufour said:
What is the meaning of the word marshal and unmarshal in plain english as
applied to an exe file?
Click to expand...

In olden times the "Marshal" of an army was the one who looked after
the horses. As horse warfare became more important, the title of
Marshal came to apply to more senior ranks. When you "marshal" your
troops or horses, it means you're lining them up - perhaps to send
them out to battle, or perhaps for review on the parade ground.

Marshalling your data is the same as marshalling your troops. Your
program probably stores its data in memory with pointers and objects
and arrays and so on. Marshalling it means to flatten it into a linear
sequence of bytes, perhaps to send over the network or perhaps to save
to disk.
 
Thanks to all of you.
Happy new year
Bob
Lucian Wischik said:
In olden times the "Marshal" of an army was the one who looked after
the horses. As horse warfare became more important, the title of
Marshal came to apply to more senior ranks. When you "marshal" your
troops or horses, it means you're lining them up - perhaps to send
them out to battle, or perhaps for review on the parade ground.

Marshalling your data is the same as marshalling your troops. Your
program probably stores its data in memory with pointers and objects
and arrays and so on. Marshalling it means to flatten it into a linear
sequence of bytes, perhaps to send over the network or perhaps to save
to disk.
Click to expand...
 
What a verry informative explanation ...

I did now what Marshalling means in programming turns since the COM era ,
however where the word came from was a complete mystery to me

So thank you , i have learned something new today

regards

Michel
 
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