Microsoft 9GD00001 manual Net, Primitive Types

Chapter 2: Learning Just Enough C# or VB.NET: Basic Syntax 53

VB

C#

.NET

Description

Byte	byte	Byte	8-bit unsigned integer
SByte	sbyte	SByte	8-bit signed integer
Short	short	Int16	16-bit signed integer
UInt16	ushort	UInt16	16-bit unsigned integer
Integer	int	Int32	32-bit signed integer
UInt32	uint	UInt32	32-bit unsigned integer
Long	long	Int64	64-bit signed integer
UInt64	ulong	UInt64	64-bit unsigned integer
Single	float	Single	32-bit floating point
Double	double	Double	64-bit floating point
Boolean	bool	Boolean	true or false
Char	Char	Char	16-bit Unicode character
Decimal	decimal	Decimal	96-bit decimal (used for money)
String	string	String	String of Unicode characters

Table 2-2 Primitive Types

learn how to create custom types later. First, you need to learn about primitive types. The primitive types are part of the programming languages and built into .NET. A primitive type is the most basic type of data that you can work with in .NET, which can’t be broken into smaller pieces. In contrast, a custom type can be made up of one or more primitive types, such as a Customer type that would have a name, an address, and possibly more bits of data that are primitive types. Table 2-2 lists the primitive types and descriptions.

Looking at Table 2-2, remember that C# is case-sensitive and all of the primitive types are lowercase. You can also see a third column for .NET types. Occasionally, you’ll see code that uses the .NET type, which aliases the C# and VB language-specific types. The following example shows how to declare a 32-bit signed integer in both C# and VB, along with the .NET type:

C#:

int age1; Int32 age2;

VB:

Dim age1 as Integer Dim age2 as Int32