Marshaling – what is it and why do we need it?

Question

What is marshalling and why do we need it?

I find it hard to believe that I cannot send an int over the wire from C# to C and have to marshall it. Why c

Answer 1

As Vinko says in the comments, you can pass primitive types without any special marshalling. These are called "blittable" types and include types like byte, short, int, long, etc and their unsigned counterparts.

This page contains the list of blittable and non-blittable types.