Question

Rather, is there a way to tell if it’s been compiled with the optimization parameter enabled or disabled. I don’t want to know if it’s release or debug, since either can be enabled with or without optimizations. From my perspective, even though the code says it’s release version, is it truly optimized? Thanks.

Answer 1

One way to check is to look at the DebuggableAttribute (doc) on the assembly. The DisableOptimizations flag will not be set if the C# complier was passed the /optimize option.

Note: Although this will work for the majority of scenarios this is not a 100% fool proof solution. It can be broken it at least the following ways

1. Compiling with another language that has different semantics for optimization
2. If the user hand defines the DebuggableAttribute it will take precedence over what the C# compiler defines