Why can you assign Nothing to an Integer in VB.NET?

Question

Why am I allowed to assign Nothing to a value-type in VB.NET:

Dim x as Integer = Nothing

But I\'m not allowed to assign

Answer 1

An interesting example from the language spec: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=01eee123-f68c-4227-9274-97a13d7cb433&displaylang=en

7.1.1 Nullable Value Types For value types, a ? modifier can be added to a type name to represent the nullable version of that type. A nullable value type can contain the same values as the non-nullable version of the type as well as the null value. Thus, for a nullable value type, assigning Nothing to a variable of the type sets the value of the variable to the null value, not the zero value of the value type. For example:

Dim x As Integer = Nothing
Dim y As Integer? = Nothing

' Prints zero
Console.WriteLine(x)
' Prints nothing (because the value of y is the null value)
Console.WriteLine(y)