What is the difference between int, Int16, Int32 and Int64?

What is the difference between int, System.Int16, System.Int32 and System.Int64 other than their sizes?

Each type of integer has a different range of storage capacity

   Type      Capacity

   Int16 -- (-32,768 to +32,767)

   Int32 -- (-2,147,483,648 to +2,147,483,647)

   Int64 -- (-9,223,372,036,854,775,808 to +9,223,372,036,854,775,807)

As stated by James Sutherland in his answer:

> int and Int32 are indeed synonymous; int will be a little more > familiar looking, Int32 makes the 32-bitness more explicit to those > reading your code. I would be inclined to use int where I just need > 'an integer', Int32 where the size is important (cryptographic code, > structures) so future maintainers will know it's safe to enlarge an > int if appropriate, but should take care changing Int32 variables > in the same way. > > The resulting code will be identical: the difference is purely one of > readability or code appearance.

The only real difference here is the size. All of the int types here are signed integer values which have varying sizes

• Int16: 2 bytes
• Int32 and int: 4 bytes
• Int64 : 8 bytes

There is one small difference between Int64 and the rest. On a 32 bit platform assignments to an Int64 storage location are not guaranteed to be atomic. It is guaranteed for all of the other types.

int

It is a primitive data type defined in C#.

It is mapped to Int32 of FCL type.

It is a value type and represent System.Int32 struct.

It is signed and takes 32 bits.

It has minimum -2147483648 and maximum +2147483647 value.

Int16

It is a FCL type.

In C#, short is mapped to Int16.

It is a value type and represent System.Int16 struct.

It is signed and takes 16 bits.

It has minimum -32768 and maximum +32767 value.

Int32

It is a FCL type.

In C#, int is mapped to Int32.

It is a value type and represent System.Int32 struct.

It is signed and takes 32 bits.

It has minimum -2147483648 and maximum +2147483647 value.

Int64

It is a FCL type.

In C#, long is mapped to Int64.

It is a value type and represent System.Int64 struct.

It is signed and takes 64 bits.

It has minimum –9,223,372,036,854,775,808 and maximum 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 value.

According to Jeffrey Richter(one of the contributors of .NET framework development)'s book 'CLR via C#':

int is a primitive type allowed by the C# compiler, whereas Int32 is the Framework Class Library type (available across languages that abide by CLS). In fact, int translates to Int32 during compilation.

Also,

> In C#, long maps to System.Int64, but in a different programming > language, long could map to Int16 or Int32. In fact, C++/CLI does > treat long as Int32. > > In fact, most (.NET) languages won't even treat long as a keyword and won't > compile code that uses it.

I have seen this author, and many standard literature on .NET preferring FCL types(i.e., Int32) to the language-specific primitive types(i.e., int), mainly on such interoperability concerns.

EDIT: This isn't quite true for C#, a tag I missed when I answered this question - if there is a more C# specific answer, please vote for that instead!

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They all represent integer numbers of varying sizes.

However, there's a very very tiny difference.

int16, int32 and int64 all have a fixed size.

The size of an int depends on the architecture you are compiling for - the C spec only defines an int as larger or equal to a short though in practice it's the width of the processor you're targeting, which is probably 32bit but you should know that it might not be.

Nothing. The sole difference between the types is their size (and, hence, the range of values they can represent).

A very important note on the 16, 32 and 64 types:

if you run this query... Array.IndexOf(new Int16[]{1,2,3}, 1)

you are suppose to get zero(0) because you are asking... is 1 within the array of 1, 2 or 3. if you get -1 as answer, it means 1 is not within the array of 1, 2 or 3.

Well check out what I found: All the following should give you 0 and not -1 (I've tested this in all framework versions 2.0, 3.0, 3.5, 4.0)

C#:

Array.IndexOf(new Int16[]{1,2,3}, 1) = -1 (not correct)
Array.IndexOf(new Int32[]{1,2,3}, 1) = 0 (correct)
Array.IndexOf(new Int64[]{1,2,3}, 1) = 0 (correct)

VB.NET:

Array.IndexOf(new Int16(){1,2,3}, 1) = -1 (not correct)
Array.IndexOf(new Int32(){1,2,3}, 1) = 0 (correct)
Array.IndexOf(new Int64(){1,2,3}, 1) = -1 (not correct)

So my point is, for Array.IndexOf comparisons, only trust Int32!

1. int and int32 are one and the same (32-bit integer)
2. int16 is short int (2 bytes or 16-bits)
3. int64 is the long datatype (8 bytes or 64-bits)

They tell what size can be stored in a integer variable. To remember the size you can think in terms of :-) 2 beer( 2 bytes) , 4 beer(4 bytes) or 8 beer( 8 bytes).

• Int16 :-2 beers/bytes = 16 bit = 2^16 = 65536 = 65536/2 = -32768 to 32767

• Int32 :- 4 beers/bytes = 32 bit = 2^32 = 4294967296 = 4294967296/2 = -2147483648 to 2147483647

• Int64 :- 8 beer/ bytes = 64 bit = 2^64 = 18446744073709551616 = 18446744073709551616 /2 = -9223372036854775808 to 9223372036854775807

> In short you can store more than 32767 value in int16 , more than > 2147483647 value in int32 and more than 9223372036854775807 value in > int64.

To understand above calculation you can check out this video int16 vs int32 vs int64

They both are indeed synonymous, However i found the small difference between them,

1)You cannot use Int32 while creatingenum

enum Test : Int32
{ XXX = 1   // gives you compilation error
}

enum Test : int
{ XXX = 1   // Works fine
}

2) Int32 comes under System declaration. if you remove using.System you will get compilation error but not in case for int

The answers by the above people are about right. int, int16, int32... differs based on their data holding capacity. But here is why the compilers have to deal with these - it is to solve the potential Year 2038 problem. Check out the link to learn more about it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem

Int=Int32 --> Original long type

Int16 --> Original int

Int64 --> New data type become available after 64 bit systems

"int" is only available for backward compatibility. We should be really using new int types to make our programs more precise.

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One more thing I noticed along the way is there is no class named Int similar to Int16, Int32 and Int64. All the helpful functions like TryParse for integer come from Int32.TryParse.