COM Data Types in Scriptom

The following table summarizes the equivalent types between Scriptom and COM (VB6/VBA/.NET).

Groovy/Java	VB6/VBA	VB.NET	Comments
null	Null	???	VariantNull is not the same as Java null. Use Scriptom.NULL.
VariantNull	Boolean	Boolean
byte	byte	Byte/SByte	8-bit signed or unsigned integer. 0 to 255 in the COM library. -128 to 127 in Java. Conversion happens automatically.
short	Integer	Short	16-bit signed integer. -32,768 to 32,767.
int	Long	Integer	32-bit signed integer. -2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647.
(long)	-	UInteger	32-bit unsigned integer. 0 to 4,294,967,295.
long	-	Long	64-bit signed integer. -9,223,372,036,854,775,808 to 9,223,372,036,854,775,807. 64-bit integers are not supported by COM in Windows Millenium or Windows 2000 and earlier.
(BigInteger)	-	ULong	64-bit unsigned integer. 0 to 18,446,744,073,709,551,615. 64-bit integers are not supported by COM in Windows Millenium or Windows 2000 and earlier.
float	Single	Single	Low-precision floating point. -3.402823E38 to -1.401298E-45 for negative values; 1.401298E-45 to 3.402823E38 for positive values.
double	Double	Double	High-precision floating point. The range of a Double is -1.79769313486231E308 to -4.94065645841247E-324 for negative values; 4.94065645841247E-324 to 1.79769313486232E308 for positive values.
BigDecimal	-	Decimal	High-precision fixed/floating point (96 bits plus scaling), but without the large mantissa values supported by Double. Scriptom supports the Currency data type by converting to and from Decimal. The range of a Decimal is +/-79,228,162,514,264,337,593,543,950,335 for zero-scaled numbers (that is, numbers with no decimal places). For numbers with 28 decimal places, the range is +/-7.9228162514264337593543950335. The smallest possible non-zero number is 0.0000000000000000000000000001. BigDecimal values with greater precision than Decimal supports are automatically rounded.
BigDecimal	Currency	-	Numbers from -922,337,203,685,477.5808 to 922,337,203,685,477.5807, with a fixed decimal point. Scriptom handles Currency values internally as type Decimal.
Date	Date	Date
String	String	String
SafeArray	Array	Array
ActiveXObject	A COM-callable object	A COM-callable object

Note that implicit type conversions are supported, so you could - for instance - pass a float to a method that expects a double. COM unsigned integer types are converted to the next largest Java signed equivalent integer type so that large positive values do not cause overflows.

CAUTION: The default floating-point type in Groovy is BigDecimal, which gets converted to a COM Decimal. Although Decimal will work in the majority of cases, type conversions involving Decimal are inefficient compared to other numeric types. It is a good idea to explicitly coerce Decimal values to type Double or type Integer, whichever makes the most sense. Also note that Decimal does not handle the types of large mantissas that type Double can, but it supports more precision.