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bool

Visual Studio .NET 2003

The bool keyword is an alias of System.Boolean. It is used to declare variables to store the Boolean values, true and false.

Literals

You can assign a Boolean value to a bool variable, for example:

bool MyVar = true;

You can also assign an expression that evaluates to bool to a bool variable, for example:

bool Alphabetic = (c > 64 && c < 123);

Conversions

In C++, a value of type bool can be converted to a value of type int; in other words, false is equivalent to zero and true is equivalent to nonzero values. In C#, there is no conversion between the bool type and other types. For example, the following if statement is invalid in C#, while it is legal in C++:

int x = 123;
if (x)   // Invalid in C#
{
   printf("The value of x is nonzero.");
}

To test a variable of the type int, you have to explicitly compare it to a value (for example, zero), that is:

int x = 123;
if (x != 0)   // The C# way
{
   Console.Write("The value of x is nonzero.");
}

Example

In this example, you enter a character from the keyboard and the program checks if the input character is a letter. If so, it checks if it is lowercase or uppercase. In each case, the proper message is displayed.

// keyword_bool.cs
// Character Tester
using System;
public class BoolTest 
{
   public static void Main() 
   {
      Console.Write("Enter a character: "); 
      char c = (char) Console.Read();

      if (Char.IsLetter(c)) 
         if (Char.IsLower(c))
            Console.WriteLine("The character is lowercase.");
         else
            Console.WriteLine("The character is uppercase.");
      else
         Console.WriteLine("The character is not an alphabetic character.");
   }
}

Input

Sample Output

Enter a character: X
The character is uppercase.

Additional sample runs might look as follow: