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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
    Figure 1 – Data Types Classification

    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 built-in 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 TypeSize Range
    char1 byte
    unsigned char1 byte
    signed char1 byte
    int2 bytes
    unsigned int2 bytes
    signed int2 bytes
    short int2 bytes
    long int4 bytes
    signed long int4 bytes
    unsigned long int4 bytes
    float4 bytes
    double8 bytes
    long double10 bytes
    Table 1 – C++ Data Type Classification

    Note: Some of the ranges is compiler dependent.

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