Programming PERL in the .NET Environment

.NET Types and PerlNET

The .NET types that we use in PerlNET may be divided into two major groups: value types and reference types. Value type variables store the value itself, while reference type variables store a reference (an address in memory where the data is located). References are useful for compound types, and usually we use them to work with instances of .NET class types—objects.

Whenever a .NET method returns an object, PerlNET stores a reference to it unless this object represents one of the value types: System.Int32, System.Double, System.Decimal, and so on. Here are the .NET value types of our interest (they all reside in the System namespace):

• Boolean

• Char

• SByte

• Int16

• Int32

• Int64

• Byte

• UInt16

• UInt32

• UInt64

• Single

• Double

• Decimal

PerlNET stores ...