Visual Basic 2015 Unleashed

Widening and Narrowing Conversions

With the exception of boxing and unboxing, conversions are of two kinds: widening conversions and narrowing conversions. Their type depends on whether the conversion is explicit or implicit, as explained in the following sections.

Widening Conversions

Widening conversions occur when you try to convert a type into another one that can include all values of the original type. A typical example of a widening conversion is converting from an Integer into a Double, as in the following lines of code:

'Widening conversionDim i As Integer = 1Dim d As Double = i

As you might remember from Table 4.2, Integer represents a numeric value, whereas Double represents a large floating-point number. Therefore, Double is greater ...