common type system (CTS)

When placed in memory, value types contain their own copy of data, in binary notation.

The data is stored in the actual memory cell that is addressed by the value type’s identifier.

In contrast, the contents of reference type memory cells are much different. Reference

types contain the address or location in which the sequence of bits is stored.

An integer value type, such as 2012, representing the year a car was manufactured,

is stored directly in the memory cell. To store a string of characters, such as the kind of

vehicle, the memory location would contain the address in which ‘‘Corvette’’ is located.

The string data type is a reference type. The memory location associated with the

identifier does not contain the characters ‘‘Corvette’’, but instead the address in which

‘‘Corvette’’ is stored.

The value types are often called the fundamental data types or primitive data types of the

 

language. They are the common types needed by most applications.
values can be of either

Enumerated types or

 

Struct types which consist of struct, bool, and numeric

at the lowest level of the you find that Integral, Floating-point, and Decimal make up the Numeric types.

  

Twelve types belong to the numeric value type. Nine of them are Integral (whole number

types), two are floating-point (numbers that can have a fractional value), and one is a

decimal type. The decimal type is a fairly new data type; it is not found with C++, C,

or Java. It was added to C# to eliminate the problems of loss of precision in mathematical

operations that occurred in previous languages. The basic C# types all have aliases in the

 

System namespace.