C# for Programmers: A Practical Guide/

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Variable Types

Variable Types

This lesson gives an overview of all the types of variables in C# like int, bool, double, char and float and much more!

We'll cover the following...

Integer

An integer is a number that does not have any decimal places. It is a whole number, for example, 1,2,3,4 are all integers. 4.3 is not. If you were to try and place the number 4.3 into an integer, the number would​ be truncated to 4.

There are further different types in an integer as well. All of them differ in size which we’ll discuss further down the lesson.

Let’s take a look at them one by one.

C#
using System;
namespace VariablesExampleOne
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            sbyte a = -128; 
            Console.WriteLine("The variable a contains " + a);
            byte b = 255;
            Console.WriteLine("The variable b contains " + b);
            short c = 32767;
            Console.WriteLine("The variable c contains " + c);
            ushort d = 65535;
            Console.WriteLine("The variable d contains " + d);
            int e = 2147483647;
            Console.WriteLine("The variable e contains " + e);
            uint f = 4294967295;
            Console.WriteLine("The variable f contains " + f);
            long g = 9223372036854775807;
            Console.WriteLine("The variable g contains " + g);
            ulong h = 18446744073709551615;
            Console.WriteLine("The variable h contains " + h);
        }
    }
}

Float

Floats are floating point numbers with a storage size of 4 bytes, which means that these numbers can hold decimal places. This allows us to store numbers such as “8.344” and “34353.24123”.

Let’s go through different types of floats:

C#
using System;
namespace VariablesExampleOne
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            float i = 256.4788f; 
            Console.WriteLine("The variable i contains " + i);
            double j = 2545645645.6647; 
            Console.WriteLine("The variable j contains " + j);
            decimal k = 0.33333333333333333333333333357m; 
            Console.WriteLine("The variable k contains " + k);
        }
    }
}

Char

A char is a 16-bit data type. This means that a char can store between U+0000 and U+FFFF. char are commonly used to store text in UTF-16 (Unicode) format. A char can be initialized to hold either a number or a character, but it will store only the Unicode value.

C#
using System;
namespace VariablesExampleOne
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            char a = 'a'; 
            Console.WriteLine("The variable a contains " + a);
        }
    }
}

Note: ASCII is a system where a numerical value is assigned to every character you can think of. For a complete conversion chart visit http://ascii-code.com/

Boolean

The bool (boolean) type is a 1-byte data type that is either true or false. A true being any number other than zero and false being zero. The true keyword uses the value 1 to assign true.

C#
using System;
class BooleanExample {
  static void Main() {
    bool canJump = false;
    bool canDo = true;
    Console.WriteLine("Value of canJump is: {0}", canJump);
    Console.WriteLine("Value of canDo is: {0}", canDo);
  }
}

Sizes

This table portrays how the variable sizes vary with the variable types.

C# Alias Size (bits) Range
sbyte 8 -128 to 127
byte 8 0 to 255
short 16 -32,768 to 32,767
ushort 16 0 to 65,535
char 16 A unicode character of code 0 to 65,535
int 32 -2,147,483,648 to
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