I am curious about the string and primitive types. Article like this says string is primitive type. However second article on MSDN does not list string as primitive type.
However when I ran the code provided in second article, it displays String is not Primitive type.
Can any one guide me on this?
Thanks, Ram
Both articles says that string is NOT a primitive type. Which it is not.
If you compile and run the example code from the second article it would print:
string is not a primitive type.
I think the confusion about this is, that the syntax of of creating a new string is similar to creating valye types.
When defining a value type all of these are equal (on a 32 bit system anyway)
System.Int32 a = new System.Int32(5);
System.Int32 a = 5;
int a = 5;
Just like these when creating a reference type string:
System.String s = new System.String(new char[]{'h', 'e', 'l', 'l', 'o'});
System.String s = "hello";
string s = "hello";
Also we can compare strings by value even though they are reference types:
s == "hello";//true
This still does not make string a primitive type..
The accepted answer to this question should give you details on that.
.NET defines (from your article):
The primitive types are Boolean, Byte, SByte, Int16, UInt16, Int32, UInt32, Int64, UInt64, Char, Double, and Single.
So no. Inbuilt and very important: yes, but not a primitive.
VB uses a slightly different definition to the CLI and C# it seems.
Change-of-stance Update: No since code doesn't lie
Console.WriteLine(typeof(string).IsPrimitive); => False
Console.WriteLine(typeof(int).IsPrimitive); => True
-----end of update.
But some documentation online seems to treat String as a primitive. I think Yes - based on the following definition of "primitive". (My personal definition would be a type which can't be broken down further into component types. But I guess we're just being 'pedantic' here, it's a non-issue for me mostly.)
all primitive data types in C# are objects in the System namespace. For each data type, a short name, or alias, is provided.
Source: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms228360%28VS.80%29.aspx Another article in favor - MSDN Mag article
Summary: I guess the answer depends on your definition of primitive, which is not unambiguously defined. Source: Eric Lippert on another SO thread.
No, the string is not a primitive type.
However, it has some characteristics common with the primitive types.
The language supports string literals in the code, so that you don't have to explicitly create String instances using the new keyword to get a string object.
There is also support for concatenating strings using the + operator, which the compiler turns into a call to the String.Concat method.
Strings are immutable, which means that it in most situations has value type semantics, just like the primitive types.
String is a special primitive type. It is not a value type, but can be considered a primitive type because it can be created by writing literals, eg/ "hello" and it is possible to declare a constant of type string. Having said that, the value of IsPrimitive returns false
Console.WriteLine("hello".GetType().IsPrimitive) // output = False
EDIT: I want to take back my answer here. It is technically not a primitive type, but shares the properties I stated above.
In c# the types are primarily defined as two types: value types and primitive types.
First see the definition of primitive types in C#.
On the other hand, all primitive data types in C# are objects in the System namespace. For each data type, a short name, or alias, is provided. For instance, int is the short name for System.Int32 and double is the short form of System.Double.
Now, read this article for the difference: Primitive Types & Value Types
System.String maps to "string", which is a primitive type in the CLI. But in the reality, value types are the ones which go in the stack and not in the heap space.
So, the key is Value types vs Primitive types. By Microsoft's definition of primitive, it is a primitive type, but in a more general sense, its not.