C++ Data Type Classification

The C++ programming language has a wide variety of data types. In this article, you are going to get an overview of how these data types are classified.

A data type is a computer representation of identifiers such as variables or constants. The C++ data types are divided into 3 categories.

• Builtin types
• User-defined types
• Derived-types

Modifiers

The C++ language supports all the primitive data types like C language. The range of each of the basic data types can be changed using modifiers. A modifier changes the range of allowed values for a builtin data type.

The C++ modifiers are listed below.

• signed
• unsigned
• short
• long

The list of all the builtin data types with each modifier and their range is given in the following table.

Data Type	Size	Range
char	1 byte	(2^-7)  to (2^7) – 1
unsigned char	1 byte	0 to (2^8)-1
signed char	1 byte	(2^-7)  to (2^7) – 1
int	2 bytes	(2^-15) to (2^15)-1
unsigned int	2 bytes	0 to (2^16)-1
signed int	2 bytes	(2^-15) to (2^15)-1
short int	2 bytes	(2^-15) to (2^15)-1
long int	4 bytes	(2^-31) to (2^31)-1
signed long int	4 bytes	(2^-31) to (2^31)-1
unsigned long int	4 bytes	0 to (2^32)-1
float	4 bytes	3.4E-38 to 3.4E+38
double	8 bytes	1.7E-308 to 1.7E+308
long double	10 bytes	3.4E-4932 to 3.4E+4932

Note: Some of the ranges is compiler dependent.

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