Checked And Unchecked In C#

Introduction

In this blog, we will learn what the uses of checked and unchecked keywords in C# are.

Checked - This is the keyword and a code marker in C# laguage. It means in some of the cases, C# compiler doesn’t care about the code exception because of the default behavior and ignores the unexpected code without throwing an error.

Let’s see what I am trying to explain in a real situation.

int a = Int32.MaxValue;
int b = Int32.MaxValue;

Now, I want to add this into some other variable, as shown below.

int c = a+b ; // Here the code will execute but statement is wrong .

Suppose int can take 2,147,483,647. This limits the value only, so how can we add two maximum values into a variable?

Thus, we have the checked keyword. To force the compiler, check the code and raise the overflow exception.

Let’s see the concept in the code.

using System;
namespace mathfunction {
public class csharpdemo {
public static void Main() {
int a = Int32.MaxValue;
int b = Int32.MaxValue;
int c = a + b; // at this point of code , compiler ignore the code and move ahead . however this is wrong.
Console.WriteLine("The sum of a+b is :" + c);
Console.Read();
}
}
}

Output

Thus decorate the a+b into checked keyword, as shown below.

Int c = checked(a+b);

Now, you can see the result here. We are getting the proper exception through checked keyword.

Unchecked - Unchecked is also a code marker but it works in some special cases. This is useful in some static or fixed value.

Let’s see the example of the same code.

using System;
namespace mathfunction {
public class csharpdemo {
public static void Main() {
const int a = Int32.MaxValue;
const int b = Int32.MaxValue;
int c = checked(a + b); // at this point of code , checked will not work anymore . code throw the error.
Console.WriteLine("The sum of a+b is :" + c);
Console.Read();
}
}
}

In order to ignore these kind of errors, it can use the unchecked keyword. Let’s see the example.

int c = unchecked( a + b); // at this point of code , compiler will uncheck the code and doesn’t throw any kind of errors .

Thus, let's conclude this article in short.

Checked
This is a keyword and code marker to force compiler to check the unexpected code used in program.
Unchecked
This is a keyword and code marker and to force compiler to ignore the unexpected code or the data type used in the program .

I hope, this article will be useful for you guys. Thanks for your time and patientce for reading this article .

Your comments and feedback are always welcome.