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Data Types In C#

It is important to classify data into various types (like numeric, character, decimals, etc.). In the real world, people use various types of data depending on the requirements. For example, a chartered accountant or a salesman uses numeric data more frequently as compared to an English teacher or an English teacher uses English characters more frequently as compared to a salesman or a chartered accountant.

In programming language as well, data is also categorized to cater to the needs of various people in other words we can say that a programming language supports various data types.

In this article, we will discuss various data types that C# supports. Along with that, I will also specify the default value of each data type. A default value in a programming language is a predesigned value used by a computer program when a value is not specified by the programmer.

Signed And Unsigned Numbers

There are data types in C# (or other programming languages as well) that are both signed and unsigned like int, long, short, and byte.

Signed numbers are those numbers that represent positive and negative numbers whereas unsigned represent zero or positive numbers.

C# supports the following data types.

Boolean

Boolean data type has 2 possible values i.e. true or false. The default value is false. A Boolean variable can be declared as: -

Boolean x = false;
bool y = false;

Byte And Sbyte

In computers, information is stored in the form of bits
A bit is the smallest unit of information
A bit is a single numeric value that is either ‘0’ or ‘1’

For example, the number 2 is represented as 00000010.

Let us talk about bytes now

A Byte is a sequence of bits
8 bits make 1 byte

As specified 8 bits make 1 byte and each contains either ‘0’ or ‘1’, so the minimum value of a byte is 00000000 and the maximum value is 11111111.

If you convert the minimum and maximum values into numbers then the minimum value will be zero and the maximum value will be 255. If you want to understand how they are converted from bit to numbers then I suggest you search for ‘bit to decimal converter’.

So, the summary is: -

Data Type	Minimum Value	Maximum Value
byte	0	255
sbyte	-128	127

In C# byte is declared as: -

byte unsignedByte = 240;
sbyte signedByte = -120;

Char

Before we learn about char data type let us first start with basics.

A character is the basic unit of any language. For example, ‘A’ is a character of the English language. All the allowable characters of a language (for example a-z and A-Z in English) form a character set.

But a computer never understands the character of any language, whether it is English, Hindi, or Chinese. So, each character is assigned a unique number (code point) that a computer can understand. This is called encoding.

There is a requirement for a standard and unified character encoding that can encode all the characters of all the languages as well as all the special symbols you can think of. Here is when Unicode comes into the picture.

So, Unicode assigns a number to all the characters of all the languages. Each number is represented by one or more bytes. If a character is represented by a single byte, then we call it an 8-bit Unicode character.

So, a char is a 16-bit Unicode character. A char variable is declared as: -

char x = 'A'; // Single character
char y = '\u0041'; // Unicode of 'A'

In the preceding code both variables ‘x’ and ‘y’ is having the same value i.e. ‘A’. So, a char variable can be represented by a single character or by Unicode. In the preceding code ‘\u’ represents Unicode.

Data Type	Minimum Value	Maximum Value
char	'\u0000'	'\uffff'

Before we go to another data type I suggest you check for all 16-bit Unicode characters.

Int, Long, Short, Uint, Ulong And Ushort

All these data types represent numeric values but the difference is with the size.

Data Type	Minimum Value	Maximum Value
int	-2,147,483,648	2,147,483,647
long	-923,372,036,854,775,808	9,223,372,036,854,775,807
short	-32,768	32,767
uint	0	4,294,967,295
ulong	0	18,446,744,073,709,551,615
ushort	0	65535

int a;
long b;
short c;
uint d;
ulong e;
ushort f;

Decimal, Double, And Float

All three data types represent floating points. But the difference is the precision. The following table highlights the differences among these three data types.

Data Type	Size	Precision
float	32-bit	7 significant digits
double	64-bit	15-16 significant digits
decimal	128-bit	28-29 significant digits

Significant digits are all the digits in a number. But there are certain rules: -

All non-zero digits are significant digits
Zero among the non-zero digits is a significant digit
All leading zeros before decimal are non-significant
All zeros after decimal are significant digits

For example

12 contain 2 significant digits
7000 contains 1 significant digit
4009 contains 4 significant digits
4.20 contains 3 significant digits

decimal a = 0.0M;
float b = 0.0F;
double c = 0.0;

Posted By -	Karan Gupta

Posted On -	Tuesday, May 5, 2015

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