C# Single and Double Types

Single and Double types are available. They have no differences from the common types they are aliased to. In programming, we often hear about a Double, but less commonly about a Single. We reveal what more common type Single represents in the .NET Framework.

float  -> Single
double -> Double

This C# article demonstrates the Single and Double types. These types are known as float and double.

Examples

First, this program creates an instance of the Single and Double types and then prints their types to the console window. Then, it does the same thing for the float and double types. This shows us that the Single type is the same as the float type, and the Double type is the same as the (lowercase) double type.

Program that uses Single and Double [C#]

using System;

class Program
{
    static void Main()
    {
	{
	    Single a = 1;
	    Double b = 1;
	    Console.WriteLine(a.GetType());
	    Console.WriteLine(b.GetType());
	}
	{
	    float a = 1;
	    double b = 1;
	    Console.WriteLine(a.GetType());
	    Console.WriteLine(b.GetType());
	}
    }
}

Output

System.Single
System.Double
System.Single
System.Double

Floating-point numbers

The Single and Double types are floating-point number representations in the C# language and .NET Framework. They are precisely equivalent to the float and double types, respectively. It is more conventional for C-style language programmers to use float than Single. Because of this, code written with float is less likely to confuse other programmers who might then introduce bugs.

Summary

This article doesn't provide useful examples for Single or Double, but just demonstrates that these types are precisely equivalent in the C# language to the float and double types. This concept is named aliasing: one type is simply 'aliased' to another at the language level.