Data Types and Modifiers in C

Data Types in C

C has various data types to store data in program. C program can store integer, decimal number, character(alphabets), string(words or sentence), list etc. using various data types. We need to specify the data type of variable(identifier) to store any data in it. Explanation and basic usage of the concept is provided below. Data types and Modifiers have significant in-depth technical details which are not covered in this article. There are 2 categories of Data Types in C:

1. Primitive (Primary) Data Types

These data types store fundamental data used in the C programming.

1. int It is used to store integer values. C program compiled with GCC compiler (32-Bit) can store integers from -2147483648 to 2147483647. The size of int is compiler dependent. It takes 4 bytes in a 32-bit compiler such as GCC.

int myIntegerValue = 100;

3. char It stores single character such as ‘a’, ‘Z’, ‘@’ etc. including number, symbol or special character. It takes 1 byte (8-bits) to store each character.

char myCharacter = 'A';

Note: Every character has a corresponding ASCII value to it ranging from -128 to 127. Numbers as a character has their corresponding ASCII values too. For example, ‘1’ as char has ASCII value 49, ‘A’ has ASCII value 65.6. float It stores real numbers with precision upto 6 decimal places. It takes 4 bytes of memory and is also known as floating point number.

float myFloatingValue = 100.6543;

8. double It stores real numbers with precision upto 15 decimal places. It takes 8 bytes of memory.

double myDoubleValue = 180.715586;

2. Derived and User Defined Data Types

These are made by collection or combination of primitive data types and hence known as derived data types. Details will be covered in the articles dedicated to each topic of the following:

• Array
• Structure
• Union
• Enum
• Pointer

Modifiers in C

These are keywords in C to modify the default properties of int and char data types. There are 4 modifiers in C as follows.

1. short It limits user to store small integer values from -32768 to 32767. It can be used only on int data type.

short int myShortIntegerValue = 18;

4. long It allows user to stores very large number (something like 9 Million Trillion) from -9223372036854775808 to 9223372036854775807. Syntax “long long” is used instead of “long int”.

long long myLongIntegerValue = 827337203685421584;

8. signed It is default modifier of int and char data type if no modifier is specified. It says that user can store negative and positive values.

signed int myNegativeIntegerValue = -544;
signed int mypositiveIntegerValue = 544;
/* Both of the statements have same meaning even without "signed" modifier*/

10. unsigned When user intends to store only positive values in the given data type (int and char).

unsigned int myIntegerValue = 486;

Summary

It is important to understand the basic usage of data types to code and develop logic. There is a lot more about data types, however, you can easily proceed in your journey to C programming with the information provided.