Week 3 - FUNDAMENTAL DATA TYPES
Course Lecturer:
Muhammad Shamsu Usman
([email protected])
Department of Computer Science, FUD -
2024/2025
NUMERIC DATA TYPES
From the point of view of computer programmers,
there are two main types of numbers.
The classification of numbers in to these two
categories is based on whether they can have only
integer values or also fractional part in addition to
the integer part.
Numbers that can not have any fractional part are
called an integer. Number that can have fractional
part are called floating – point numbers.
Integers are used for counting discrete values.
On the other hand, floating point numbers are
used approximately measure something.
This distinct between integers and floating
point numbers is significant from the
perspective of representing such numbers
inside computers.
Two kinds of numeric types are common to
all programming languages:
Integral Types and
Floating – Point Types.
The term “floating – point” refers to the
scientific notation that is used for rational
numbers.
Standard C++ has 14 different fundamental
types: 11 integral types and 3 floating point
types.
The Integral Type
Boolean type: bool
Enumeration type: enum
The three character types
Char
Unsigned
Wchar_t
The six explicit integer types
Short
Int
Long
Unsigned short
Unsigned int
Unsigned long
The Floating – Point Types
float
double
long double
The most frequently used fundamental types
are bool, char, int, and double.
The Boolean Type
The Boolean type is an integral type whose
variables can have only one of the two
values: false or true.
The values are stored as the integer 0 and 1
respectively.
The Boolean type in standard C++ is named
bool.
Example
#include<iostream>
int main(){
bool signal= false;
cout<< “signal=” <<signal<<endl;
signal= true;
cout<< “signal=” <<signal<<endl;
}
Enumeration Types
In addition to the predefined types such int and
char, C++ allows you to define your own special
data types.
This can be done in several ways. The most
powerful of which use classes
we consider here much simpler kind of user –
define type an enumeration type is an integral
type that is defined by the user with the syntax:
enum typename {enumeration – list}
Here enum, is a C++ keyword
typename stands for an identifier that
names the type of being defined
and enumerator – list stands for a list of
names for integer constants.
Example:
enum season{winter, monsoon, summer};
The Character Type
The character type is an integral type whose
variables represent characters like the letter ‘A’ or
the digit ‘8’.
Character literals are delimited by the apostrophe
(‘).
Example:
#include<iostream>
int main(){
char c = ‘A’;
cout<<”c =”<<c<< “, int(c) =”<<int(c)<<endl;
c = ‘t’;
cout<< “c =”<<c<< “, int(c) =”<<int(c)<<endl;
c = ‘!’;
cout<< “c=”<< “, int(c) =”<<int(c)<<endl;
}
Since character values are used for input and
output, they appear in their character form
instead of their integral form:
the character ‘A’ is printed as the letter “A”, not
as the 65 which is its internal representation.
The type cast operator int(c) is used here to
reveal the corresponding integral value. These
are the character’s ASCII codes.
Integer Types
There are six integer types in standard C++; these
types actually have several names.
example, short is also named short int, and int is
also unsigned int.
You can determine the numerical ranges of the
integer types on your system by running the
program in the following example:
#include<iostream>
#include<climits>
int main()
{//prints some of the constants stored in the <climits>
headerfile:
cout<< “minimum short =”<<SHRT_MIN<<endl;
cout<< “maximum short =”<<SHRT_MAX<<endl;
cout<< “minimum unsigned short = 0”<<endl;
cout<< “maximum unsigned short
=”<<USHRT_MAX<<endl;
cout<< “minimum int=”<<INT_MIN<<endl;
cout<< “maximum int=”<<INT_Max<<endl;
cout<< “minimum unsigned int=0”<<endl;
cout<< “maximum unsigned int=”<<UINT_MAX<<endl;
cout<< “minimum long =”<<LONG_MIN<<endl;
cout<< “maximum long =”<<LONG_MAX<<endl;
cout<< “minimum unsigned long =0”<<endl;
cout<< “maximum unsigned long
=”<<ULONG_MAX<<endl;
}
The headerfile <climits> defines the constants
SHRT_MIN, SHRT_MAX, USHRT_MIN, etc.
these are the limits on the range of values of the
indicated type can have.
FLOATING – POINT TYPES
C++ supports three real numbers types:
float, double, and long double on the most systems
double uses twice as many bytes as float
typically, float uses 4 bytes, double uses 8 bytes, and
long double uses 8, 10, 12, or 16 bytes.
Types that use for real numbers are called “floating –
point” types because of the way they are stored
internally in the computer.
123.45 = 1111011.01110011 x 2^7
Example:
#include<iostream>
int main()
{ //tests the floating – point operators +, -, *, and /:
double x = 55.0;
double y = 20.0;
cout<< “x=”<<x<< “and y =”<<y<<endl;
cout<< “x+y=”<<(x+y)<<endl;
cout<< “x-y=”<<(x-y)<<endl;
cout<< “x*y=”<<(x*y)<<endl;
cout<< “x/y=”<<(x/y)<<endl;
}
