C# - DataTypes

Prev Next

C# is a strongly-typed language. It means we must declare the type of a variable. C# has several built-in data types that can be used to store different types of values. These data types can be broadly classified into the following categories. They are Value Types , Reference Types and Pointer Types . The Value Types store the data while the Reference Types store references to the actual data. Pointer Types variable use only in unsafe mode. The Value Types derived from System.ValueType and the Reference Types derived from System.Object .

C# Data Types

Types of C# DataTypes

Value types
Reference types
Pointer types

1. Value types

These are data types that store their value directly in memory. They are typically used for simple types of data like numbers, bool and characters.

Data Type	Description
int	It represents a 32-bit signed integer
long	It represents a 64-bit signed integer
float	It stores a single-precision floating-point number.
double	It represents a double-precision floating-point number
char	It represents a single Unicode character
bool	It represents a Boolean value (true or false)
byte	It represents an 8-bit unsigned integer
short	It represents a 16-bit signed integer

2. Reference types

These are data types that store a reference to an object in memory. They are typically used for more complex types of data like strings and arrays.

Examples

Data Type	Description
string	It represents a sequence of Unicode characters
object	It represents a reference to any object
dynamic	It represents a value that can be any type at runtime
class	It a user-defined reference type that can contain data and methods.

3. Pointer types

These are data types that store a memory address. They are used in low-level programming and are not commonly used in C#.

Following is the syntax of declaring the pointer type in the c# programming language.

int*: a pointer to an integer
char*: a pointer to a character.