Composite Data Types

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11/18/2006

In addition to the elementary data types Visual Basic supplies, you can also assemble items of different types to create composite data types such as structures, arrays, and classes. You can build composite data types from elementary types and from other composite types. For example, you can define an array of structure elements, or a structure with array members.

Data Types

A composite type is different from the data type of any of its components. For example, an array of Integer elements is not of the Integer data type.

An array data type is normally represented using the element type, parentheses, and commas as necessary. For example, a one-dimensional array of String elements is represented as String(), and a two-dimensional array of Boolean elements is represented as Boolean(,).

Structure Types

There is no single data type comprising all structures. Instead, each definition of a structure represents a unique data type, even if two structures define identical elements in the same order. However, if you create two or more instances of the same structure, Visual Basic considers them to be of the same data type.

Array Types

There is no single data type comprising all arrays. The data type of a particular instance of an array is determined by the following:

The fact of being an array
The rank (number of dimensions) of the array
The element type of the array

In particular, the length of a given dimension is not part of the instance's data type. The following example illustrates this.

Dim arrayA( ) As Byte = New Byte(12) {}
Dim arrayB( ) As Byte = New Byte(100) {}
Dim arrayC( ) As Short = New Short(100) {}
Dim arrayD( , ) As Short
Dim arrayE( , ) As Short = New Short(4, 10) {}

In the preceding example, array variables arrayA and arrayB are considered to be of the same data type — Byte() — even though they are initialized to different lengths. Variables arrayB and arrayC are not of the same type because their element types are different. Variables arrayC and arrayD are not of the same type because their ranks are different. Variables arrayD and arrayE have the same type — Short(,) — because their ranks and element types are the same, even though arrayD is not yet initialized.

For more information on arrays, see Arrays in Visual Basic.

Class Types

There is no single data type comprising all classes. Although one class can inherit from another class, each is a separate data type. Multiple instances of the same class are of the same data type. If you assign one class instance variable to another, not only do they have the same data type, they point to the same class instance in memory.

For more information on classes, see Understanding Classes.

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Composite Data Types

Data Types

Structure Types

Array Types

Class Types

See Also

Tasks

Concepts

Other Resources

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