How do you declare a Char literal in Visual Basic .NET?

Question

With Option Strict On:

Dim theLetterA As Char = "A"

returns an error about converting the string "A" to a Char.

What is the syntax to enter a Char literal?

Solution 1

A character literal is entered using a single character string suffixed with a C.

Dim theLetterA As Char = "A"C

Solution 2

I would use CChar. E.g.:

 Dim theLetterA As Char = CChar("A")

Check the MSDN website https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/s2dy91zy.aspx for details on CChar.

Solution 3

In the case of trying to get a double quote as a character literal, you'll need to use the extra quirky VB format:

Dim theQuote As Char = """"C

Or

Dim theQuote As Char = CChar("""")

Comments

[Alvaro]

That really sucks, breaks every convention! Thanks for your help

[Swanny]

Actually literal suffixing to indicate type is as old as C and Basic albeit not for string related types, and I too did feel it was a bit dubious the first time I saw it.

[Matt]

I needed to use """"C to trim quotes from a string. How ugly.

[RJB]

Deserves more upvotes. A char ctor makes more sense than a string decorator like I've never seen before.

[sstan]

@RJB: You may like the syntax better, but the fact is that this is not a character literal. It's a statement that performs a runtime conversion from a string to a character. Not the same at all.

[Kevbo]

I agree. this is old VB code and requires the visualbasic reference. The right way is to use the convert class. Convert.ToChar("A")

[Inspector Squirrel]

This made me die a little inside.

[II ARROWS]

@sstan I don't have any official statement, but it's very probable the compiler threats that sequence as character literal ("A"c) on compile time.

[deed02392]

Lowercase 'c' works too. Slightly less ugly. This isn't much different from declaring for example Python strings as unicode literals, is it?

[ryanwebjackson]

VS 2017 (15.5.6) changed the capital C I added to lowercase - I'm assuming this is preferred by Microsoft.

[ToolmakerSteve]

@Kevbo - that's still a runtime action, instead of a character literal. Probably inefficient. More importantly, much more verbose. How is Convert.ToChar("A") a readability improvement over "A"c?

[andyb]

Depends on your definition of readable I suppose. I usually avoid "magic numbers" myself, and although the VB expression is quirky AF, you'd never have to pull up an ASCII table to check it was right.

[HackSlash]

I see. I don't think the ASCII code is "magic" when talking about a CHAR because that is the actual number held by the CHAR. A char is a number. If you were to inspect the memory for theQuote you would see 34.

[fcm]

I'm still looking for a better option... VB will die without it.

[Grant Johnson]

How is this any different or more ugly then float support in C#? const float pi = 3.14159F