In this chapter you will learn:
- Different types of C# data types, their sizes and storing capacities
- Difference between value types data types and reference type data types
C# is a strongly typed language. It means, that you cannot use variable without data types. Data types tell the compiler that which type of data is used for processing. Such as if you want to work with string value then you will have to assign string type variable to work with. C# provides two types of data types: Value types and Reference types.
A Value type data type stores copy of the value whereas the Reference type data types stores the address of the value. C sharp provides great range of predefined data types but it also gives the way to create user defined data types.
A complete detail of C# data types are mentioned below:
Value Types:
| Data Types | Size | Values |
|---|---|---|
| sbyte | 8 bit | -128 to 127 |
| byte | 8 bit | 0 to 255 |
| short | 16 bit | -32,768 to 32,767 |
| ushort | 16 bit | 0 to 65,535 |
| int | 32 bit | -2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647 |
| uint | 32 bit | 0 to 4,294,967,295 |
| long | 64 bit | -9,223,372,036,854,775,808 to 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 |
| ulong | 64 bit | 0 to 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 |
| char | 16 bit | 0 to 65535 |
| float | 32 bit | -1.5 x 1045 to 3.4 x 1038 |
| double | 64 bit | -5 x 10324 to 1.7 x 10308 |
| decimal | 128 bit | -1028 to 7.9 x 1028 |
| bool | --- | True or false |
Reference Types:
| Data Types | Size | Values |
|---|---|---|
| string | Variable length | 0-2 billion Unicode characters |
| object | --- | --- |
Summary
In this chapter you learned about different types of data types that C# uses. You also know about value type data types and reference type data types. In next chapter you will learn how to use all these data types in a program to creating a variable in C#.