Fun with Reflection

I was working with an application that stored some permission information in an integer in the database. Each bit of the integer represented a particular permission. The meaning of each bit came from an enumeration defined in a VB6 DLL. I needed to dig into some of these existing permission values to find out which permissions were enabled based on which bits were set in the database.

I was originally going to write up a quick VB6 app that referenced the DLL with the enumeration. I could then do a bitwise AND for each member of the enum to see if the bit was set. I thought "This would be way easier in .NET using reflection and Enum.GetValues"...

Since I usually listen to the voices in my head, I quickly created an RCW with TLBIMP and wrote up a quick app that used Enum.GetValues and Enum.GetNames to loop through the enum and display a list of permissions for me. Way easier than manually coding it with VB6 -- or digging into the Type Library API's to do the same thing in COM.