Value Types

Vala supports a set of the simple types as most other languages do.

• Byte, char, uchar; their names are char for historical reasons.
• Character, unichar; a 32-bit Unicode character
• Integer, int, uint
• Long Integer, long, ulong
• Short Integer, short, ushort
• Guaranteed-size Integer, int8, int16, int32, int64 as well as their unsigned siblings uint8, uint16, uint32, uint64. The numbers indicate the lengths in bits.
• Float number, float, double
• Boolean, bool; possible values are true and false
• Compound, struct
• Enumeration, enum; represented by integer values, not as classes like Java's enums

Here are some examples.

/* atomic types */
unichar c = 'u';
float percentile = 0.75f;
const double MU_BOHR = 927.400915E-26;
bool the_box_has_crashed = false;

/* defining a struct */
struct Vector {
    public double x;
    public double y;
    public double z;
}

/* defining an enum */
enum WindowType {
    TOPLEVEL,
    POPUP
}

Most of these types may have different sizes on different platforms, except for the guaranteed-size integer types. The sizeof operator returns the size that a variable of a given type occupies in bytes:

ulong nbytes = sizeof(int32);    // nbytes will be 4 (= 32 bits)

You can determine the minimum and maximum values of a numerical type with .MIN and .MAX, e.g. int.MIN and int.MAX.