_cdecl vs _stdcall conventions:

_cdecl & _stdcall are two different calling conventions seen in pre .NET world. Here _cdecl is mostly used with C & C++ Environment. Here Calling function (caller) will be clearing the stack under the hood. This is default for CRT (C Runtime Library) environment.

Example:

void foo(int i) à _foo;

void foo(int i, int j) à _foo@8

Most of the Win32 (32 bit Windows OS) API’s will be of_stdcall type. Here called function (callee) will be doing the stack cleanup. Name decoration will be containing param count. Code foot print is small because clean-up code will be in only one place even there are multiple calls.

Example:

void foo(int i) à _foo@4 ; (An int param is 4 bytes in size!)

void foo(int i, int j) à _foo@8

Note: See the decorations that’s why they did not support optional params

.NET Bits

Do you know what is the purpose of Finalizer in .NET?!

Its just there to re-claim your unmanaged resources. Basically Garbage Collector does not know how to collect the unmanaged, so we pump code to do ourselves. But we cannot leave the work to Garbage Collector since it is non-deterministic. So we empower(?!) programmers to use Dispose pattern to deterministically and programmatically recollect the memory. But support a Finalizer only if there are unmanaged resources.