[Mono-dev] Reflection: invoking an unsafe constructor/method that declares pointer parameter types

[Grégory Pakosz]

hello,

on the windows platform, building a .NET facade to a complex SDK coded 
in C, i once had good reasons to use reflection in order to invoke an 
unsafe constructor that takes a void* parameter:

public unsafe class SomeClass
{
   public SomeClass(void* handle)
   {
     this.handle = handle;
   }

   private void* handle;

}

public static void Main(string[] args)
{
   ConstructorInfo constructor = 
SomeClass.GetConstructor(BindingFlags.Instance|BindingFlags.ExactBinding,null,new 
Type[]{typeof(void*)},null);

   SomeClass instance = constructor.Invoke(new Object[]{(IntPtr)0});
}

to achieve that, as you can see, i used to use the IntPtr class when 
creating the Object[] parameter array that has to be passed to the 
ConstructorInfo::Invoke method.

now, i'm trying to achieve the same behavior in Mono: and i get an 
ArgumentException because the constructor parameter's do not match; 
indeed it seems that IntPtr differs too much from void*.

i know that declaring the constructor as SomeClass(IntPtr handle) would 
be an acceptable workaround/solution. however, i was wondering whether 
or not Mono should be able to handle such a code, since Microsoft's .NET 
accepts it.

more generally, i tried to use google but did not find much information 
related to using reflection to invoke unsafe methods that declare 
pointers as parameters. how is it supposed to be achieved ? is this 
legal ? etc ...

regards,
thanks in advance for any help.
gregory.