char.md

title	char (C# Reference)
ms.date	07/20/2015
ms.prod	.net
ms.technology	devlang-csharp
ms.topic	article
f1_keywords	char char_CSharpKeyword
helpviewer_keywords	char data type [C#]
ms.assetid	b51cf4fb-124c-4067-af48-afbac122b228
caps.latest.revision	27
author	BillWagner
ms.author	wiwagn

char (C# Reference)

The char keyword is used to declare an instance of the xref:System.Char?displayProperty=nameWithType structure that the .NET Framework uses to represent a Unicode character. The value of a Char object is a 16-bit numeric (ordinal) value.

Unicode characters are used to represent most of the written languages throughout the world.

Type	Range	Size	.NET Framework type
char	U+0000 to U+FFFF	Unicode 16-bit character	xref:System.Char?displayProperty=nameWithType

Literals

Constants of the char type can be written as character literals, hexadecimal escape sequence, or Unicode representation. You can also cast the integral character codes. In the following example four char variables are initialized with the same character X:

[!code-csharpcsrefKeywordsTypes#19]

Conversions

A char can be implicitly converted to ushort, int, uint, long, ulong, float, double, or decimal. However, there are no implicit conversions from other types to the char type.

The xref:System.Char?displayProperty=nameWithType type provides several static methods for working with char values.

C# Language Specification

[!INCLUDECSharplangspec]

See Also

xref:System.Char
C# Reference
C# Programming Guide
C# Keywords
Integral Types Table
Built-In Types Table
Implicit Numeric Conversions Table
Explicit Numeric Conversions Table
Nullable Types
Strings