why are there reference types and value types?

I understand the difference between reference and value types. I don't understand why there are the two different types though.

Can someone please explain why one type uses the value and the other uses a pointer to point to a different location in memory?

What is the advantage of having the two different types?

Re: why are there reference types and value types?

Because traditionally program data has been stored on stack whereas heap is a portion of RAM hence two types of storage requires two data type

Re: why are there reference types and value types?

Good article from MSDN refering the advantages and disadvantages of both value and reference types.Please go through

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc301569.aspx

Re: why are there reference types and value types?

it will shown the difference between value type and reference type

http://csharpektroncmssql.blogspot.in/2011/11/diffrece-between-value-type-and.html

Re: why are there reference types and value types?

@ newbie2C#

this is the simplified answer.

(a) the feature is not unique to c#

(b) hardware architecture matters (see (c), below).

(c) size matters ... you'll notice that the value types are simple types that for all intents and purposes have a one to one correspondence to the physical design of the CPU and, to a lessor extent, the RAM.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/s1ax56ch.aspx "Value Types (C# Reference)"

<div class="introduction">
The value types consist of two main categories:

Structs

Enumerations

Structs fall into these categories:

Numeric types

Integral types

Floating-point types

decimal

bool

User defined structs.

</div>

Get yourself a free copy of LINQPad 4* and do some experimentation ... write some very short pieces of code and look at the IL (intermediate language) by clicking IL button above the results window. Repeat your experimenents with value types ... the IL will be different because of the way the compiler designers are able to tweak the underlying hardware.

* if you do not have LINQPad 4:

TOOLS ... get yourself a FREE copy of LINQPad 4 (http://linqpad.net) .. Joe Albahari's LINQPad 4 is an awesome programmer's scratch pad that enables you to quickly check out code snippets you find in books and on web sites plus LINQPad also lets you rapidly experiment with c# ideas before committing them to vs2010.

LINQPad 4 supports c#, F#, SQL, vb.

Re: why are there reference types and value types?

P.S.: i suspect that the compiler designers could implement absolutely everything as reference types; that would not be a good idea because they would not be taking advantage of the design of the underlying hardware. OTOH, if they tried to make everything a value type, that would lead to horrific inefficiencoes such as one might encounter when trying to force a square peg into a round hole.

you may find this interesting:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/436211/is-everything-in-net-an-object