ECMA-334: 11.1.5 Integral types

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C# Language Specification

11. Types 11.1 Value types 11.1.1 System.ValueType type 11.1.2 Default constructors 11.1.3 Struct types 11.1.4 Simple types 11.1.5 Integral types 11.1.6 Floating point types 11.1.7 decimal type 11.1.8 bool type 11.1.9 Enumeration types

© 2006 ECMA International

11.1.5 Integral types

C# supports nine integral types: sbyte, byte, short, ushort, int, uint, long, ulong, and char. The integral types have the following sizes and ranges of values:

• The sbyte type represents signed 8-bit integers with values from –128 to 127, inclusive.

• The byte type represents unsigned 8-bit integers with values from 0 to 255, inclusive.

• The short type represents signed 16-bit integers with values from –32768 to 32767, inclusive.

• The ushort type represents unsigned 16-bit integers with values from 0 to 65535, inclusive.

• The int type represents signed 32-bit integers with values from –2147483648 to 2147483647, inclusive.

• The uint type represents unsigned 32-bit integers with values from 0 to 4294967295, inclusive.

• The long type represents signed 64-bit integers with values from –9223372036854775808 to 9223372036854775807, inclusive.

• The ulong type represents unsigned 64-bit integers with values from 0 to 18446744073709551615, inclusive.

• The char type represents unsigned 16-bit integers with values from 0 to 65535, inclusive. The set of possible values for the char type corresponds to the Unicode character set. [Note: Although char has the same representation as ushort, not all operations permitted on one type are permitted on the other. end note]

The integral-type unary and binary operators always operate with signed 32-bit precision, unsigned 32-bit precision, signed 64-bit precision, or unsigned 64-bit precision, as detailed in clause §14.

The char type is classified as an integral type, but it differs from the other integral types in two ways:

• There are no implicit conversions from other types to the char type. In particular, even though the sbyte, byte, and ushort types have ranges of values that are fully representable using the char type, implicit conversions from sbyte, byte, or ushort to char do not exist.

• Constants of the char type shall be written as character-literals or as integer-literals in combination with a cast to type char. [Example: (char)10 is the same as '\x000A'. end example]

The checked and unchecked operators and statements are used to control overflow checking for integral-type arithmetic operations and conversions (§14.5.12). In a checked context, an overflow produces a compile-time error or causes a System.OverflowException to be thrown. In an unchecked context, overflows are ignored and any high-order bits that do not fit in the destination type are discarded.