Data types in C

By Ansh Kashyap
DATA TYPES IN C
BCA 1 semester
Section B

In the C Programming language, data types refer to a broad system used for
declaring variables or functions of different types. The type of a variable determines
how much space it occupies in storage and how the bit pattern stored is interpreted.
DATA TYPES

TYPES OF DATA TYPES
DATA TYPES
Primary Derived
Int Char
Float Type Void
User Define
Enumerated Typedef
Structure
Array Pointer

Integers are whole numbers with a range of values, range of values are machine
dependant. Generally an integer occupies 2 bytes memory space and its value range
limited to -32768 to +32767.
INT DATA TYPES
Data Type ControlString Size Range
Int %d 2 bytes -32768 to 32767
Long int %ld 4 bytes -2 to +2
Unsigned int %u 2 bytes 0 to 65535
31 31

Character type variable can hold a single character. As there are signed and
unsigned int (either short or long), in the same way there are signed and unsigned
chars; both occupy 1 byte each, but having different ranges Unsigned characters
have values between 0 and 255; signed character have from -128 to 127.
CHAR DATA TYPE

The float data type is used to store fractional numbers (real numbers) with 6 digits of
precision. Floating point number is insufficient, we can use the double to define the
number. The double is same as float but with longer precision and takes double
space (8 bytes) than float. To extend the precision further we can use long double
which occupies 10 bytes of memory space.
FLOAT DATA TYPE
Data Type Size Value Range Precision
float 4 byte 1.2E-38 to
3.4E+38
6 Decimal places
double 8 byte 2.3E-308 to
1.7E+308
15 Decimal places
Long double 10 byte 3.4E-4932 to
1.1E+4932
19 Decimal places

The void data types has no values therefore we cannot declare it as variable as we
did in case of integer and float. The void data type is usually used with function to
specify its type. Like in our first C program we declared “main()” as void type because
it does not return any value.
TYPE VOID DATA TYPE

Array: An array in C language is a collection of similar data-type, means an array
can hold value of a particular data type for which it has been declared. Arrays can be
created from any of the C data-type int.
DERIVED DATA TYPE
Pointer: C Pointer is a special variable that can be used to store address of another
variable.

Enumerated data type is a user defined data type having finite set of enumeration
constants. The keyword ‘enum’ is used to create enumerated data type. Enumeration
data type consists of named integer constants as a list. It start with 0 (zero) by default
and value is incremented by 1 for the sequential identifiers in the list.
ENUMERATED DATA
TYPE (ENUM)
Syntax:
Enum [data_type] {const1,const2…….constn};
Enum examples in C:
enum month { Jan, Feb, Mar }; or /* Jan, Feb and Mar variables will be assigned to 0, 1 and 2
respectively by default */
enum month { Jan = 1, Feb, Mar }; /* Feb and Mar variables will be assigned to 2 and 3
respectively by default */

It is used to create new data type. But it is commonly used to change existing data
type with another name.
TYPEDEF DATA TYPE
Syntax:
typedef [data_type] new_data_type;
Example:
Typedef int integer;
Integer roll_no;

C Structure is a collection of different data types which are grouped together and
each element in a C structure is called member.
TYPEDEF DATA TYPE
Example:
struct student {
Int roll_no;
char name[20];
char city[20];
}

Data types in C

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