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?

Jeff Mercado · Accepted Answer · 2012-09-03T16:15:51.270

176

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

Dim theLetterA As Char = "A"C

edited Sep 03 '12 at 16:15

answered Jul 30 '10 at 19:46

Jeff Mercado

22

That really sucks, breaks every convention! Thanks for your help – Alvaro May 22 '14 at 12:47
3

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. – Swanny Jun 20 '14 at 05:25
9

I needed to use """"C to trim quotes from a string. How ugly. – Matt Dec 01 '14 at 22:03
14

This made me die a little inside. – Inspector Squirrel May 27 '16 at 09:52
4

Lowercase 'c' works too. Slightly less ugly. This isn't much different from declaring for example Python strings as unicode literals, is it? – deed02392 Oct 05 '17 at 08:01
VS 2017 (15.5.6) changed the capital C I added to lowercase - I'm assuming this is preferred by Microsoft. – ryanwebjackson Feb 15 '18 at 17:14
I'm still looking for a better option... VB will die without it. – fcm Jul 06 '20 at 11:42
2

How is this any different or more ugly then float support in C#? const float pi = 3.14159F – Grant Johnson Mar 09 '22 at 22:31

score 9 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 03 '15 at 19:25

9

I would use CChar. E.g.:

 Dim theLetterA As Char = CChar("A")

answered Mar 03 '15 at 19:25

Alan Barksdale

Deserves more upvotes. A char ctor makes more sense than a string decorator like I've never seen before. – RJB Jul 15 '15 at 00:16
20

@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. – sstan Dec 20 '15 at 04:57
2

I agree. this is old VB code and requires the visualbasic reference. The right way is to use the convert class. Convert.ToChar("A") – Kevbo Feb 09 '16 at 22:52
@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. – II ARROWS Apr 28 '17 at 13:50
1

@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`? – ToolmakerSteve Nov 13 '18 at 12:19

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 25 '18 at 19:54

2

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("""")

answered Jan 25 '18 at 19:54

andyb

1

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. – andyb Sep 26 '19 at 17:30
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`. – HackSlash Sep 26 '19 at 18:14

3 Answers3