The Primitive Types Available in C

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	.NET and COM Interoperability Handbook, The By Alan Gordon
	Table of Contents
	Chapter Four.  A Quick Introduction to C#

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The Primitive Types Available in C#

The list of primitive types available in C# is very similar to C and C++. One of the major reasons for the cross-language interoperability of the .NET Framework is that all languages share a common type system: the CTS. The primitive types in C# are just aliases for CTS types. Table 4-4 shows the primitive types available in C#.

Table 4-4. A Mapping of C# types to CTS types

C# Types	CLS Compliant	Equivalent CTS Type	Description
bool	Yes	System.Boolean	True or false
byte	Yes	System.SByte	Unsigned 8-bit number
sbyte	No	System.Byte	Signed 8-bit number
char	Yes	System.Char	16-bit Unicode character
int	Yes	System.Int32	Signed 32-bit number
uint	No	System.UInt32	Unsigned 32-bit number
long	Yes	System.Int64	Signed 64-bit number
ulong	No	System.UInt64	Unsigned 64-bit number
short	Yes	System.Int16	Signed 32-bit number
ushort	No	System.UInt16	Unsigned 32-bit number
float	Yes	System.Single	32-bit floating point number
double	Yes	System.Double	64-bit floating point number
system.DateTime	Yes	System.DateTime	Date time
decimal	Yes	System.Decimal	Signed 96-bit number
string	Yes	System.String	Unicode character string.
object	Yes	System.Object	Base class for all types

Most of the familiar primitive types from C and C++ like int, long, short, char, float, and double are present in C#. C# also supports unsigned types like uint, ushort, and unlong, but keep in mind that these unsigned types are not CLS compliant. Therefore, if you do expose types from your libraries that use these unsigned types in their interface, those libraries will not be usable from many managed code languages including VB.NET. Avoid unsigned types in your interfaces if you want to write components that may be consumed by languages other than C#.

Note

The CLS specifies the features that all managed code languages must support as a minimum.

With C#, as in most managed-code languages, you can use either the language-specific alias or the CTS type name freely and interchangeably. In other words, declaring a variable to be of type "int" is exactly the same as declaring it to be of type "System.Int32". In addition, a function that accepts a parameter of type float will also accept a parameter that is typed as System.Single.

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