What is the purpose of and in what situations is the reflection mechanism used in programming?

Reflection is a mechanism in programming that allows inspecting and modifying the structure and behavior of objects, classes, methods, and properties at runtime.

In C#, reflection is used for:

• Obtaining information about types, methods, properties, and attributes.
• Dynamically creating instances of objects.
• Calling methods and accessing fields without static typing.
• Inspecting and modifying metadata.

It is used, for example, in:

• Frameworks for serialization/deserialization.
• ORM (Object-Relational Mapping).
• Plugin systems where classes need to be loaded and used dynamically.

Example:

Type type = typeof(String);
var methods = type.GetMethods();
foreach(var method in methods)
{
    Console.WriteLine(method.Name);
}