Visual Basic 2005 for Programmers: Deitel Developer Series, Second Edition

7.11. Value Types and Reference Types

As we discussed briefly in Chapter 4, all Visual Basic types can be categorized as either value types or reference types. A variable of a value type contains data of that type. Normally, value types are used for a single piece of data, such as an Integer or a Double value. By contrast, a variable of a reference type contains the address of the location in memory where the data referred to by that variable is stored. The actual object to which the variable refers can contain many individual pieces of data. Reference types are known as classes and are discussed in more detail in Chapters 9–11.

Both value types and reference types include primitive types and types that you can create. The primitive value types ...