Question

In c# if I use decimal (lower case ‘d’), the IDE shows it in dark blue (like int). If I use Decimal (upper case ‘d’), the IDE shows it in teal (like a class name). In both cases the tooltip is struct System.Decimal.

Is there any difference? Is one “preferred”?

Answer 1

Nope; identical. decimal is defined as an alias to System.Decimal, and is generally preferred, except in public method names, where you should use the proper name (ReadDecimal, etc) – because your callers might not be C#. This is more noticeable in int vs ReadInt32, etc.

There certainly isn’t the Java-style boxing difference.

(of course, if you do something like declare a more-namespace-local Decimal that does something completely different, then there are differences, but that would be silly).