DATA TYPES IN C

C language has very rich set of data types. At presently we will go through some of the basic data types available in C.

Variable Type	Keyword	Bytes Required	Range	Format
Character (Signed)	Char	1	-128 to +127	%c
Integer  (Signed)	Int	2	-32768 to +32767	%d
Float (Signed)	Float	4	-3.4e38 to +3.4e38	%f
Double	Double	8	-1.7e308 to + 1.7e308	%lf
Long integer (Signed)	Long	4	-2,147,483,648 to 2,147,438,647	%ld
Character  (Unsigned)	Unsigned char	1	0 to 255	%c
Integer  (Unsigned)	Unsigned int	2	0 to 65535	%u
Unsigned long integer	Unsigned long	4	0 to 4,294,967,295	%lu
Long double	Long double	10	-1.7e932 to +1.7e932	%Lf

Character:

 To access and to store single character it use char data type in C. Char data type occupies  1 bytes. It means that char data type use 1 byte of memory to store some character value.

Declaration of character variable:

char ans;       

Assigning values to character variable:

Ans=’y’;

8          7          6          5          4          3          2          1

Sign

2⁷         2⁶         2⁵         2⁴         2³         2²         2¹         2⁰

Above given is a general structure of character variable. The leftmost bit is used to indicate the positive or negative value of a variable. So the range for character variable is –2⁷ to 2⁷ –1 .means –128 to 127.

Integer:

 To access and to store any integer value int data type is use. C’s int data type occupies 2 bytes in the memory.

To declare any integer variable:

Int rollno;

Int accno;

To assign or to store integer value in this variable:

Rollno=10;

Accno=100;

16   15   14    13   12   11    10   9     8      7     6     5     4     3     2      1

Sign

2¹⁵    2¹⁴   2 ¹³    2¹²   2¹¹    2¹⁰   2 ⁹      2 ⁸    2⁷      2⁶     2⁵       2⁴     2 ³      2²     2¹     2⁰

Above given is a general structure of integer variable. The leftmost bit is used to indicate the positive or negative value of a variable. So the range for integer variable is –2¹⁵ to 2¹⁵ –1 .means –32768 to 32767.

Float:

To access and to store any real value float data type is use. C’s float data type occupies 4 bytes in the memory.

To declare any float variable:

Float per;

Float rate;

To Assign or to store some real value

Per=70.20;

Rate=123.45

32                                                                                                                                               1

Sign

2³¹                                                                                                                                                                                               2⁰

Above given is a general structure of float variable. The leftmost bit is used to indicate the positive or negative value of a variable. So the range for float variable is –231 to 2³¹ –1 .

Means -3.4e38 to +3.4e38

Long:

To access and to store any integer value long data type is use. C’s long data type occupies 4 bytes in the memory.

To declare any long variable:

long account;

long price;

To Assign or to store some long value

account=123456;

Rate=98765;

32                                                                                                                                               1

Sign

2³¹                                                                                                                                                                                               2⁰

Above given is a general structure of long variable. The leftmost bit is used to indicate the positive or negative value of a variable. So the range for long variable is –231 to 2³¹ –1 .

Means - 2,147,483,648 to +2,147,438,647

Posted in: c, Fundamentals of Programming (FOP)