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Tip #003

Make big numbers readable

C# 7

Code card showing that underscores make a billion easier to read without changing its value; hex and binary examples are included. Output: True, System.UInt32, 165.

About this tip

The compiler ignores underscores in numeric literals. They work in hex and binary too. How many zeroes? 1_000_000_000 vs 1000000000. It is available since C# 7. The key line is var easyBillion = 1_000_000_000 in numbers.cs. It fits in 12 lines; run it with dotnet run numbers.cs.

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Code

numbers.cs
// how many zeroes is a billion?
var billion = 1000000000;


// oh! nine zeroes.
var easyBillion = 1_000_000_000;
Console.WriteLine(billion == easyBillion);


// works with hex and binary too
var color = 0xFF_EF_44_44;
var flags = 0b1010_0101;
Console.WriteLine(color.GetType());
Console.WriteLine(flags);

Output

Output
$ dotnet run numbers.cs
True
System.UInt32
165