Is String a primitive type?

Question

I am curious about the string and primitive types. Article like this says string is primitive type. However second article on MSDN does not list string as primitive type.

Answer 1

they are not, because they are sequence of characters

Answer 2

Change-of-stance Update: No since code doesn't lie

Console.WriteLine(typeof(string).IsPrimitive); => False
Console.WriteLine(typeof(int).IsPrimitive); => True

-----end of update.
But some documentation online seems to treat String as a primitive. I think Yes - based on the following definition of "primitive". (My personal definition would be a type which can't be broken down further into component types. But I guess we're just being 'pedantic' here, it's a non-issue for me mostly.)

all primitive data types in C# are objects in the System namespace. For each data type, a short name, or alias, is provided.

Source: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms228360%28VS.80%29.aspx Another article in favor - MSDN Mag article

Summary: I guess the answer depends on your definition of primitive, which is not unambiguously defined. Source: Eric Lippert on another SO thread.

Answer 3

.NET defines (from your article):

The primitive types are Boolean, Byte, SByte, Int16, UInt16, Int32, UInt32, Int64, UInt64, Char, Double, and Single.

So no. Inbuilt and very important: yes, but not a primitive.

VB uses a slightly different definition to the CLI and C# it seems.

Answer 4

String is a special primitive type. It is not a value type, but can be considered a primitive type because it can be created by writing literals, eg/ "hello" and it is possible to declare a constant of type string. Having said that, the value of IsPrimitive returns false

Console.WriteLine("hello".GetType().IsPrimitive) // output = False

EDIT: I want to take back my answer here. It is technically not a primitive type, but shares the properties I stated above.