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Asked: 2026-05-25T16:02:50+00:00

What does * mean in XAML. I have a grid of width 400. And

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What does * mean in XAML. I have a grid of width 400. And divided the grid to 3 columns.
What does *.4 mean? I thought it is 40% of the space available. so thought the first 2 columns will get 40% percent each and the rest is taken by the third column.
but looks like, the third column is taking 60% and the first two are getting 20% each.
How does this work?

<Grid>
    <Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
        <ColumnDefinition Width=".4*"/>
        <ColumnDefinition Width=".4*"/>
        <ColumnDefinition />
    </Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
</Grid>

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Basically, the default is “1*”, so what you have above is effectively:

    <Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
    <ColumnDefinition Width="0.4*" />
    <ColumnDefinition Width="0.4*" />
    <ColumnDefinition Width="1.0*" />
</Grid.ColumnDefinitions>

    The Star grid spacing (GridUnitType.Star) proportionally distributes space. In your case, you have a total of 1.8 (1.0 + 0.4 + 0.4), so the first two columns each get 22.2% (0.4/1.8) of the width allocated to them.

    To get what you want, you can use:

    <Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
    <ColumnDefinition Width="0.4*" />
    <ColumnDefinition Width="0.4*" />
    <ColumnDefinition Width="0.2*" />
</Grid.ColumnDefinitions>

    This sets the total to 1.0, so each becomes a percentage.

    Note that this will give exactly the same result as doing:

    <Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
    <ColumnDefinition Width="40*" />
    <ColumnDefinition Width="40*" />
    <ColumnDefinition Width="20*" />
</Grid.ColumnDefinitions>

    Since the total proportions are divided up by the total (100) now, still giving 40%, 40%, 20%.

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