Question

I don’t know what the correct wording is for what I am trying to achieve so it may already be posted online. Please be kind if it is.

Ok so basically I have this method.

public static T IsNull<T>(IDataReader dr, String name, T nullValue)
{
    return Helpers.IsNull(dr, dr.GetOrdinal(name), nullValue);
}

public static T IsNull<T>(IDataReader dr, Int32 index, T nullValue)
{
    if (dr.IsDBNull(index))
    {
        return nullValue;
    }
    else
    {
        return (T)dr.GetValue(index);
    }
}

Being called as Helpers.IsNull(dr, "UnitWholeSale", 0d) and the error I am getting is “Cannot convert from double to decimal”.

Now I know I can use decimal.Zero but is there some way that I can simply go 0dec or something similar? I just hate those long shortcut values (especially when you are calling a constructor with 20 parameters).

Answer 1

0m is how you say (decimal)0 because m is the suffix that means decimal.

Other suffixes are f for float, d for double, u for unsigned, and l for long. They can be either upper- or lower-case and u can be combined with l in either order to make a ulong.

Although the suffixes are not case-sensitive, keep in mind what it says in the C# language specification, section 2.4.4.2:

As a matter of style, it is suggested that “L” be used instead of “l” when writing literals of type long, since it is easy to confuse the letter “l” with the digit “1”.