Should DWORD map to int or uint?

c# .net winapi pinvoke dword
user541686 picture user541686 · Jul 17, 2011 · Viewed 43.3k times · Source

When translating the Windows API (including data types) into P/Invoke, should I replace DWORD with int or uint?

It's normally unsigned, but I see people using int everywhere instead (is it just because of the CLS warning? even the .NET Framework itself does this), and so I'm never really sure which one is the correct one to use.

Answer

ChrisF picture ChrisF · Jul 17, 2011

Well according to the MSDN DWORD is an unsigned integer with a range of 0 to 4294967295.

So ideally you should replace it with uint rather than int.

However, as you have spotted uint is non-CLS compliant so if your method is publicly visible you should use int and do the conversion. The corollary to that is that if your method isn't used outside your assembly you should mark it as internal rather than public. Then you'll be able use a uint.

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