What is the purpose of the sorted bit vector field in the "~" Metadata header in a .NET assembly?

Question

According to the Partition II metadata, it says that the valid field is a bitmask that notes which CLR metadata tables are present in a .NET executable--but what I can't figure out is what the "sorted" field is for--what is its significance, and what should I emit into this field when creating my own .NET portable executable images?

Answer 1

I think the sorted field is just hinting if the specific metadata table is sorted or not (it's a bitfield just like valid).

This would allow an implemenation of a runtime to do a binary search on the table directly from the memmapped data.