다음을 통해 공유


The value type

Last time, I discussed the ref
type
.  This time, I'm going to talk about the value type.  This is the
CLR type exposed in Managed Extensions by the __value keyword,
and available in Whidbey C++ using the context-sensitive
keyword
value.

What is a value type?   I view value types as a convenient way
to lump data together.  This isn't to say it has no member functions - it might
well - but the concept is of a chunk of data.  Where you might use a ref type
to implement a linked list class, a value type might be the right choice for the nodes
in that linked list.

What makes a value type different from a ref type?   Value
types can go almost anywhere: on the stack, as members of a ref class, passed
to functions, returned from functions, and even on the gc
heap
.  They are considerably more lightweight than ref types.  However,
unlike ref classes, they cannot be inherited from.

Okay, well that sounds simple.  There's one more wrench
in the works: there's a special subset of value types called simple value
types.  These are value types that don't contain any handles (^) as members. 
With this restriction comes a benefit: simple value types can be allocated on the
native heap.

Let's look at the code for a value class:

  value class Point{

private:

int x,y;

public:

Point(int a, int b):x(a), y(b){}

int GetX(){ return x; }

int GetY(){ return y; }

void set(int a, int b){ x=a;
y=b; }

};

This is a good example of a simple value type, because it contains no handle (^) members. 

Value types aren't too complicated, as you can plainly see.  In a future code
sample, we'll look at implementing a basic data structure using completely managed
code.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    June 07, 2008
    Last time, I discussed the ref type .  This time, I'm going to talk about the value type.  This is the CLR type exposed in Managed Extensions by the __value keyword, and available in Whidbey C++ using the context-sensitive keyword value
  • Anonymous
    June 15, 2009
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