Byte literals

[AnthonyDGreen]

There's no way to express a Byte in VB. It can be a pain in some cases involving Option Strict. It also seems arbitrary since all the other numeric types have a suffix. We discussed this in a previous LDM and came up with SB and UB as the literal suffix for signed byte and unsigned byte respectively.

Dim signed = 1SB
Dim unsigned = 255UB

Seems cheap and consistent.

[craigajohnson]

Seems like a no-brainer.

In addition to SB, could just B also be added for (what I consider to be) the most common case - signed byte (either 1SB or 1B would be accepted)?

[reduckted]

Why SB? Why not just B. It consistent with the other type literal characters.

Literal type character	Data Type
S	Short
US	UShort
I	Integer
UI	UInteger
L	Long
UL	ULong

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/visual-basic/programming-guide/language-features/data-types/type-characters#forced-literal-types

[AnthonyDGreen]

Because in Hex B is a digit. Also because Byte is inconsistent with the other types in that the "default" is unsigned, so we weren't sure people would see 255B and know that it's (crap, I've forgotten while writing this what it is)... Signed (and an overflow, technically). Lastly, since UB is by far the more common case it's not that important to optimize SB.

[reduckted]

Because in Hex B is a digit.

Ah yes, good point, because &H1B is an Integer today, but would become ambiguous if we used B as the type char.

I'm good with UB and SB then. Anything will be better than having to use CByte() 😀

[craigajohnson]

^^ same as @reduckted! I hadn't thought of a suffix after a hex literal but of course.

[KathleenDollard]

Dupe of #213