Are nint/nuint intended to be used as a replacement for IntPtr/UIntPtr

[ghost]

As they technically do the same thing at a base level, are C#9+ codebases intended to use nint or nuint to replace all IntPtr or UIntPtr usages?

[huoyaoyuan]

As they technically do the same thing at a base level

Yes. nint compiles into plain IntPtr.

are C#9+ codebases intended to use nint or nuint to replace all IntPtr or UIntPtr usages?

I'm not sure. Do use nint when you need arithmetic operations.

[qrli]

No. nint and nuint are integers, while IntPtr and UIntPtr are pointers. It depends on what your intention is.

[qrli]

I agree that functionally nint can replace IntPtr. But in declaration/contract, they kind of convey different messages to developers. IntPtr is mostly used for pointers and handles, where consumers are typically not expected to manipulate the values. Surely it is only typing difference, just like int vs void* in C.

So, is the current recommendation to forget that typing? I can understand it may be well true in some frameworks, as they have already been working that way. But are you going to make it the general choice by default?

[Unknown6656]

I use nint or nuint for integral/arithmetic operations and void* for pointer operations. I nowadays hardly use IntPtr or UIntPtr at all.....

[ghost]

Okay so from my understanding here, in the context of Win32 something like PVOID should be an IntPtr/UIntPtr and something like SIZE_T should be an nint/nuint?

[qrli]

@Unknown6656 For applications, you can absolute do that. But for library authors, we also need to consider .NET languages other than C#, which may not support pointer types at all. That's one of the reasons IntPtr is a thing.

If .NET could say pointer type should be supported by all .NET languages, that would remove the need of IntPtr.

[huoyaoyuan]

Pointer is something you can dereference. IntPtr, or handle, is more opaque.