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Tuesday 23 February 2010

C Data Types and Sizes

  • In a C program, the programmer has to tell the system before, the type of numbers or characters he is using in his program. These specification of data is called data type.
  • C language data types can be classified in to 3 types as shown in figure


Primary Data type:

NoData TypeFull formRange of Values
1charCharacter-128 to 127
2intInteger-32768 to +32767
3floatsingle precision floating point3.4e-38 to 3.4e+38
4doubleDouble precision floating point1.7e-308 to 1.7e+308
5voidVoid
  • void data type used in functions to specify the return value or the arguments.
  • There are number of qualifiers such as short,long,signed,unsigned can be applied to these primary data types.
  • The possible qualifiers for the basic type are shown in the table
NoData TypeQualifier
1charSigned,Unsigned
2intshort,long,signed,unsigned
3floatNo qualifier
4doublelong
5voidNo qualifier

  • Each compiler is free to choose appropriate size for its own hardware with restrictions that short and int are atleast 16 bits and longs are atleast 32 bits and size of short < int < long.
  • qualifier signed or unsigned may be applied to char or any integer.
  • unsigned numbers are always positive or zero and obey the laws of arithmetic modulo 2n, where n is the number of bits in the type.For example char is 8 bits so unsigned char variables have values between 0 and 28 ie values between 0 and 255.
Data Type16 bit machine32 bit machine
size(bytes)RangeSize(bytes)Range
Char or Signed Char1-128 to 1271-128 to 127
Unsigned Char10 to 25510 to 255
Short int or Signed short int1-128 to 1272-32768 to 32767
unsigned short int10 to 25520 to 65535
int or Signed int2-32768 to 327674-2147483648 to 2147483647
Unsigned int20 to 6553540 to 4294967295
Long int or Signed long int4-2147483648 to 21474836474-2147483648 to 2147483647
Unsigned long int40 to 429496729540 to 4294967295
Float43.4e-38 to 3.4e+3843.4e-38 to 3.4e+38
Double81.7e-308 to 1.7e+30881.7e-308 to 1.7e+308
Long Double103.4e-4932 to 3.4e+493216

  • If we do not specify either signed or unsigned, most compiler will assume the type to be signed.           so signed int x; can be written as int x;
  • short and long can be used alone as type specifiers. 
            short=short int
            long=long int
            Short int x; can be wriiten as short x;

  • signed and unsigned can also be used alone as type specifiers. 
            signed int=signed
            unsigned int=unsigned
            unsigned  int x; can be wriiten as unsigned x;

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    Please give some more examples where enum/unions/function pointers can be used in real world problems.

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