In C#, there are several ways of representing numerical data. Your usage of each will depend on your application. When choosing a data type, think about the following questions:
Do I need a whole number or do I need something that will represent a fraction, or a decimal? If I want to use a decimal, how precise do I need to be? Depending on your application, whether it’s a hobby project or building a B2B financial services software, you’ll need a different data type. Is performance a factor? Most times, choosing a data type that takes up less memory will result in faster applications.
Let’s look at two data types that we can use to represent different numerical values:
Int
An int is a whole integer value, like 4, 100, or 2349. They’re a good way to count units of things. For example, if we wanted to track the number of coin flips a user makes, we’d use an int. It doesn’t make sense to have 0.5 coin flips!
To define a variable with the type int
, you would write it as follows:
int variableName = 7;
Double and Decimal
If we need to use a decimal value, we have a few options: float, double, and decimal. These values are useful for anything that requires more precision than a whole number, like measuring the precise location of an object in 3D space.
A double is usually the best choice of the three because it is more precise than a float
, but faster to process than a decimal. However, make sure to use a decimal for financial applications, since it is the most precise.
To define a variable with the type double
, you would write it as follows:
double variableName = 39.76876;
To define a variable with the type decimal
, you would write it as follows:
decimal variableName = 489872.76m;
Don’t forget the m
character after the number! This character tells C# that we’re defining a decimal and not a double.
Instructions
Several large pizza chains employ C# developers. Let’s imagine that you work for the chain, Giant Brutus. Your boss gives you some data and wants you to enter it into a C# program.
The first value they give you is the number of pizza shops they own, which is 4332. Save this number to a variable named pizzaShops
. Which data type should you use for the variable?
The next value is the number of employees, which is 86,928. Save this number to the variable totalEmployees
.
The total revenue for a single Big Brutus franchise store is 390,819.28. Save this number to the variable revenue
.
Print the three variables to the console.