The FieldInit metadata can optionally be added to a field declaration. The use of this feature shall not be combined with a data label.
The FieldInit information is stored in metadata and this information can be queried from metadata. But the CLI does not use this information to automatically initialize the corresponding fields. The field initializer is typically used with literal fields (§II.16.1.2) or parameters with default values. See §II.22.9.
The following table lists the options for a field initializer. Note that while both the type and the field initializer are stored in metadata there is no requirement that they match. (Any importing compiler is responsible for coercing the stored value to the target field type). The description column in the table below provides additional information.
| FieldInit ::= | Description |
|---|---|
bool '(' true |
false ')' |
| bytearray '(' Bytes ')' |
String of bytes, stored without conversion. Can be padded with one zero byte to make the total byte-count an even number |
| char '(' Int32 ')' |
16-bit unsigned integer (Unicode character) |
| float32 '(' Float64 ')' |
32-bit floating-point number, with the floating-point number specified in parentheses. |
| float32 '(' Int32 ')' |
Int32 is binary representation of float |
| float64 '(' Float64 ')' |
64-bit floating-point number, with the floating-point number specified in parentheses. |
| float64 '(' Int64 ')' |
Int64 is binary representation of double |
| [ unsigned ] int8 '(' Int32 ')' |
8-bit integer with the value specified in parentheses. |
| [ unsigned ] int16 '(' Int32 ')' |
16-bit integer with the value specified in parentheses. |
| [ unsigned ] int32 '(' Int32 ')' |
32-bit integer with the value specified in parentheses. |
| [ unsigned ] int64 '(' Int64 ')' |
64-bit integer with the value specified in parentheses. |
| | QSTRING | String. QSTRING is stored as Unicode |
| nullref |
Null object reference |
[Example: The following shows a typical use of this:
.field public static literal valuetype ErrorCodes no_error = int8(0)
The field named no_error is a literal of type ErrorCodes (a value type) for which no memory is allocated. Tools and compilers can look up the value and detect that it is intended to be an 8-bit signed integer whose value is 0. end example]