C# 0 The Complete Reference

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Some methods defined by the structures that correspond to the built-in value types take a 

parameter of type 

IFormatProvider

 or 

NumberStyles

.

 IFormatProvider

 is briefly described 

later in this chapter. 

NumberStyles

 is an enumeration found in the 

System.Globalization

namespace. The topic of formatting is discussed in Chapter 22.

The Integer Structures

The integer structures are

Byte

SByte

Int16

UInt16

Int32

UInt32

Int64

UInt64

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Each of these structures contains the same methods. They are shown in Table 21-2. The only 

difference from structure to structure is the return type of 

Parse( )

. For each structure, 

Parse( )

returns a value of the type represented by the structure. For example, for 

Int32

,

Parse( )

returns an 

int

 value. For 

UInt16

,

Parse( )

 returns a 

ushort

 value. For an example that 

demonstrates

Parse( )

, see Chapter 14.

In addition to the methods shown in Table 21-2, the integer structures also define the 

following

const

 fields:

MaxValue

MinValue

For each structure, these fields contain the largest and smallest value that type of integer 

can hold.

All of the integer structures implement the following interfaces: 

IComparable

,

IComparable

,

IConvertible

,

IFormattable

, and 

IEquatable

, where 

T

 is replaced 

by the corresponding data type. For example, 

T

 will be replaced with 

int

 for 

Int32

.

Method

Meaning

public int CompareTo(object 

v

)

Compares the numerical value of the invoking object 

with that of 

v.

 Returns zero if the values are equal. 

Returns a negative value if the invoking object has a 

lower value. Returns a positive value if the invoking 

object has a greater value.

public int CompareTo(

type v

)

Compares the numerical value of the invoking object 

with that of 

v.

 Returns zero if the values are equal. 

Returns a negative value if the invoking object 

has a lower value. Returns a positive value if the 

invoking object has a greater value. In this version of 

CompareTo( )

,

type

 explicitly specifies the data type, 

such as in 

System.Int32.CompareTo(int 

v

)

.

public override bool Equals(object 

v

)

Returns true if the value of the invoking object equals 

the value of 

v.

public bool Equals(

type v

)

Returns true if the value of the invoking object equals 

the value of 

v. 

In this version of 

Equals( )

,

type

explicitly specifies the data type, such as in 

System.Int32.Equals(int

v

)

.

public override int GetHashCode( )

Returns the hash code for the invoking object.

public TypeCode GetTypeCode( )

Returns the 

TypeCode

 enumeration value for the 

equivalent value type. For example, for 

Int32

, the type 

code is 

TypeCode.Int32

.

public static 

retType

 Parse(string 

str

)

Returns the binar y equivalent of the numeric string in 

str.

 If the string does not represent a numeric value as 

defined by the structure type, an exception is thrown. 

retType

 is a placeholder for the actual type of data 

returned based on which numeric structure is used. 

For example, for 

Int32

,

retType

 will be 

int

.

T

ABLE

 21-2 

Methods Suppor ted by the Integer Structures

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