How to iterate through the built-in types in C#?

Question

I want to iterate through the built-in types (bool, char, sbyte, byte, short, ushort, etc) in c#.

How to do that?

foreach(var x in GetBuiltInTypes())
{
//do something on x
}

Answer 1

System.TypeCode is the closest thing I can think of.

foreach(TypeCode t in Enum.GetValues(typeof(TypeCode)))
{ 
    // do something interesting with the value...
}

Answer 2

It depends on how you define "built-in" types of course.

You might want something like:

public static IEnumerable<Type> GetBuiltInTypes()
{
   return typeof(int).Assembly
                     .GetTypes()
                     .Where(t => t.IsPrimitive);
}

This should give you (from MSDN):

Boolean, Byte, SByte, Int16, UInt16, Int32, UInt32, Int64, UInt64, IntPtr, UIntPtr, Char, Double, and Single.

If you have a different definition, you might want to enumerate all of the types in common BCL assemblies (such as mscorlib, System.dll, System.Core.dll etc.), applying your filter as you go along.

Answer 3

There's no built-in way to do that; you can try:

foreach (var type in new Type[] { typeof(byte), typeof(sbyte), ... })
{
    //...
}

Of course, if you're going to be doing this a lot, factor out the array and put it inside a static readonly variable.