Finding the .NET Framework library path

I recently had a need to find the path to the .NET Framework binaries. Here's the official way of finding it, using a function exposed from mscoree.dll:

const int MAX_PATH = 256;
public string GetNetFrameworkDirectory() {
    StringBuilder buf = new StringBuilder(
        MAX_PATH, MAX_PATH);
    int cch = MAX_PATH;
    int hr = GetCORSystemDirectory(
        buf, MAX_PATH, ref cch);
    if (hr < 0) Marshal.ThrowExceptionForHR(hr);
    return buf.ToString();
}

[DllImport("mscoree.dll",
         CharSet=CharSet.Unicode,
         ExactSpelling=true)]
public static extern int GetCORSystemDirectory(
        StringBuilder buf,
        int cchBuf,
        ref int cchRequired);

This returned the following string on my 1.1 box:

C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322\

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Posted Oct 18 2005, 02:33 PM by keith-brown