6.1 Visual Basic 2022 Data Types

Visual Basic 2022 classifies information into two major data types, numeric data types and non-numeric data type.

6.1.1 Numeric Data Types

Numeric data types are types of data comprising numbers that can be calculated mathematically. Examples of numeric data types are examination marks, height, body weight, number of students in a class, share values, the price of goods, monthly bills, fees, bus fares and more.

Numeric data are divided into seven types based on the range of values they can store. Calculations that only involve round figures or data that do not need high precision can use Integer or Long integer. Programs that require high precision calculation must use Single and Double precision data types; they are also called floating point numbers. For currency, you can use the currency data types. If even more precision is required to perform calculations that involve many decimal points, we can use the decimal data types. These data types are summarized in Table 6.1.

Table 1 Numeric Data Types

Type	Storage	Range
Byte	1 byte	0 to 255
Integer	2 bytes	-32,768 to 32,767
Long	4 bytes	-2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,648
Single	4 bytes	-3.402823E+38 to -1.401298E-45 for negative values 1.401298E-45 to 3.402823E+38 for positive values.
Double	8 bytes	-1.79769313486232e+308 to -4.94065645841247E-324 for negative values 4.94065645841247E-324 to 1.79769313486232e+308 for positive values.
Currency	8 bytes	-922,337,203,685,477.5808 to 922,337,203,685,477.5807
Decimal	12 bytes	+/- 79,228,162,514,264,337,593,543,950,335 if no decimal is use +/- 7.9228162514264337593543950335 (28 decimal places).

6.1.2 Non-numeric Data Types

Non-numeric data types are data that cannot be manipulated mathematically. Non-numeric data comprises text or string data types, Date data types, Boolean data types Object data type and Variant data type. They are summarized in Table 6.2.

Table 2 Non-numeric Data Types

Type	Storage	Range
String(fixed length)	Length of string	1 to 65,400 characters
String(variable length)	Length + 10 bytes	0 to 2 billion characters
Date	8 bytes	January 1, 100 to December 31, 9999
Boolean	2 bytes	True or False
Object	4 bytes	Any embedded object
Variant(numeric)	16 bytes	Any value as large as Double
Variant(text)	Length+22 bytes	Same as variable-length string

6.1.3 Suffixes for Literals

Literals are values that you assign to data. In some cases, we must add a suffix behind a literal so that VB2022 can handle the calculation more accurately. For example, we can use num =1.3089# for a Double type data. The suffixes are summarized in Table 6.3.

Table 6.3 Suffixes and Data Types

Suffix	Data type
&	Long
!	Single
#	Double
@	Currency

In addition, we must enclose string literals within two quotations whereas date and time literals must be enclosed within two # sign. Strings can contain any characters, including numbers. The following are a few examples:

memberName="Turban, John."
TelNumber="1800-900-888-777"
LastDay=#31-Dec-00#
ExpTime=#12:00 am#

6.1 Visual Basic 2022 Data Types