This section on converting between types is specific to C#. VB .NET handles type conversion very differently and should be taken into consideration if VB .NET is your primary programming language. I’ll be briefly looking into converting between types, Boxing and what it is and implement a conversion operator.

Strings and StringBuilders

One of the built in reference types within the .NET Framework you will commonly use is the System.String type. System.String has a set of members for manipulating text. For example here is a simple quick method for finding and replacing text:

Reference types store an address of their data, aka “pointer” on the portion of the memory called the “stack”. The actual data to which the pointer refers to is stored in an area of memory called the “heap”. Because reference types directly store the address “pointer” to the data rather than the data itself, assigning one reference variable to another doesn’t copy the data over. Instead, it merely creates a second copy of the “pointer”, which also refers to the same memory on the heap as the original.