What does EE means in string.cs file?

[CwjXFH]

What does EE means in String comment?

public sealed partial class String : IComparable, IEnumerable, IConvertible, IEnumerable<char>, IComparable<string?>, IEquatable<string?>, ICloneable
{
    //
    // These fields map directly onto the fields in an EE StringObject.  See object.h for the layout.
    //
    [NonSerialized]
    private readonly int _stringLength;
}

---

The definition of String.Empty was not found in this repository. The screenshot is from https://referencesource.microsoft.com/#mscorlib/system/string.cs

Thanks.

[Dotnet-GitSync-Bot]

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[Youssef1313]

Check this SO question.

[omajid]

CoreCLR also has several documents that help define what an EE is: https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/search?l=Markdown&q=Execution+Engine

[danmoseley]

runtime/docs/design/coreclr/jit/ryujit-overview.md

Line 22 in 7cbf0a7

RyuJIT provides both just-in-time and ahead-of-time compilation service for the .NET runtime. The runtime itself is

The runtime itself is
--
23 | variously called the EE (execution engine), the VM (virtual machine), or simply the CLR (common language runtime).

Probably https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/blob/a21da8f6d945002bbb7cdb426c148867f60be528/docs/project/glossary.md should make clear that "Virtual Machine" is not being used in the normal sense (which I think was not commonly used when the term likely arose in ~2000)

[danmoseley]

I think this is answered, unless @jkotas you believe there is value in trying to settle on a single term (that perhaps covers Mono also)

[jkotas]

Both "execution engine" and "virtual machine" are used interchangeably, for both CoreCLR and Mono. I do not see the value in unification.

[danmoseley]

@CwjXFH if you like, feel free to offer a PR to improve glossary.md.