What's the equivalent of WORD in C#?

Question

I'm trying to access an unmanaged library and am lucky to have access to a comprehensive guide to the API.

Unfortunately, I've no idea what the C# equivalent of C++'s WORD type is. Similarly, I've no idea what DWORD would be.

Carmelcarmela

Apparently the guide isn't that comprehensive ;) – Gorden

Answer 1

You're probably looking for ushort for WORD and uint for DWORD.

Mors

Note that this is correct only because a C# application is (extremely) highly likely to be running on a machine for which those are the widths of the C++ data types. The C++ types (in contrast to the C# types) are not universally the same. Exceptions to this would be so unlikely, though, that this comment is really quite pointless. Sorry. – Nunez

and don't forget ulong for QWORD, although the OP didn't ask about those :P – Gumbo

See figure 2 in Calling Win32 DLLs in C# with P/Invoke for some common types. – Cleavage

@Jeffrey I don't think your comment is that pointless. What if I run Mono on a non-32-bit platform? – Turco

You're absolutely right, which is why I said "probably" in my response. I usually always add that caveat for completeness, but the likelihood of someone asking a question and being on a platform with non-standard type widths is so low that I should just leave it out. – Mors

@Jeffrey: the Windows API defines WORD and DWORD in terms of bit sizes and signs, not in terms of C/C++ types, so there should be no problem. That is, unless the types in question are not the WinAPI types... – Gorden

I would encourage you, when doing any kind of interop or using data from other sources, to use the .NET defined types like UInt16, UInt32, and UInt64 rather than the C# aliases. You'll save yourself a lot of confusion. – Fluster