What is a Value Type ?
Friday, October 12th, 2007The simplest types in the .NET Framework, primarily numeric and Boolean types, are value types. Value types are variables that contain their data directly instead of containing a reference to the data stored elsewhere in memory. Instances of value types are stored in an area of memory called the stack, where the runtime can create, read, update, and remove them quickly with minimal overhead.
There are three general value types:
- Built-in types
- User-defined types
- Enumerations
Each of these types is derived from the System.Value base type.
