The Common Type System (CTS)

The CTS is a rich standard set of types and operations within the CLR. According to Microsoft, the CTS supports complete implementation of most programming languages. Many languages will use some sort of naming alias to refer to a specific type within the CTS. For instance, the type System.Int32 in the CTS is an integer in Delphi, and an int in C#. Although named differently at the language level, they both map to the same underlying type. This aspect of the CTS contributes to language interoperability.

The benefits of having the CTS are at least three-fold. It provides a level of language interoperability. Second, because all types are derived from one base class, all types have a common interface. Finally, the CTS ...

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