Numbers

We can create integers like so:

var number = 43;

But what about floating-point numbers or decimals?

Well, we can just add a specific letter after the number:

var floatNumber = 12F;  // float
var doubleNumber = 23D; // double
var decimalNumber = 5M; // decimal
var longNumber = 12L;   // long

So, we need:

  • F for float
  • D for double
  • M for decimal
  • L for long

Also, we can create double numbers like so:

var doubleNumber = 12.34;

For integers, we can can unsigned numbers when we don't care about negative numbers and we want only positive ones:

var unsignedNumber = 12U;
Console.WriteLine(unsignedNumber);

So, it means that the max value for unsigned should be double the max one for all ints, doesn't it? 😏

var maxInt = int.MaxValue;
var maxIntUnsigned = UInt32.MaxValue;

Console.WriteLine(maxIntUnsigned > maxInt * 2); // True

isNaN

To check if a value if not a number, you need to use double.isNaN:

var number = double.NaN;
var result = double.IsNaN(number);
Console.WriteLine(result); // True

Also, whenever you try to divide a number by 0, then the DivideByZeroException is thrown.

Overflowing

We can get the maximum value of an integer like this:

var maxValue = int.MaxValue;
Console.WriteLine(maxValue); // 2147483647

If we increment this value, then the maxValue get the minumum value: 😱

maxValue++;
Console.WriteLine(maxValue); // -2147483648

And this can be a real problem because this behavior passes as normal. This is called integral overflow.

If you want to throw exceptions when this happens, you can use checked:

checked
{
    maxValue++;
    Console.WriteLine(maxValue);
}

This time, it throws the OverflowException exception because the incrementing operation caused an overflow.

We can also check only an statement:

checked(maxValue++);

WARNING

The checked operator cannot be applied for double, float and decimal.

So make sure that you are aware of this issue and when this might happen, you should use checked.