Why does a System.Boolean take 4 bytes? It just stores one state, either true or false, which could be stored in less space than 4 bytes.
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Why does a System.Boolean take 4 bytes? It just stores one state, either true or false, which could be stored in less space than 4 bytes.
A
boolis actually only 1 byte, but alignment may cause 4 bytes to be used on a 32-bit platform, or even 8 bytes on a 64-bit platform. For example, theNullable<bool>(akabool?) type uses a full 32 or 64 bits—depending on platform—even though it’s comprised of just twobools. EDIT: As pointed out by Jon Skeet, padding for alignment isn’t always present. As an example, an array ofNullable<bool>s takes only 2 bytes per object instead of 4 or 8.But even 8 bits to represent a
boolcan be considered wasteful if you have many of them to store. For this reason, if you create a type that has manybools as members, (or uses manyNullable<>types), and users of your class might create many instances of it, you might consider using aBitVector32instead. The framework itself uses this technique to reduce the memory footprint of many of the Windows Forms controls, for instance.