reflection - Does the typeof() operator in C# allocate a new Type object on the heap, or return an existing one?

Question

Should be pretty self-explanatory, but this is in the context of real-time XNA code where I want to avoid allocations in order to avoid triggering GC. So I'm wondering if the managed Type objects associated with the types that have been loaded are always present in the runtime, or if typeof() actually constructs a new Type object (presumably from some unmanaged metadata in the runtime) on the heap, which will be garbage collected. Feel free to point out any ignorant assumptions/misconceptions revealed by even asking this question as well =)

Answer 1

From the C# 4 spec section 7.6.11:

There is only one System.Type object for any given type. This means that for a type T, typeof(T) == typeof(T) is always true.

(Additionally, if you get the type via reflection it will always fetch the same Type object too, but that's not in the spec.)