C Programming language

C has a concept of 'data types' which are used to define a variable before its use. A C programmer use appropriate data type as per his requirement. C supports various data types such as character, integer and float etc. All the data types are made up of units of memory called bytes. n order of size, starting with the smallest, the integer types are char, short, int, long. The smaller types take less memory, the larger types takes more space in memory.

Integers are whole numbers with a range of values, Generally an integer occupies 2 bytes memory space and its value range limited to -32768 to +32768. To control the range of numbers and storage space, C has three classes of integer storage namely short int, int and long int. All three data types have signed and unsigned forms. Integer Data Types are denoted by int.

int <variable name>	/*	Syntax	*/

int num1;//  Range of short int is -32768 to -32767
short int num2;//  Range of short int is -128 to 127
long int num3;// Range of long integer is -2147483648 to 2147483647
signed int num4;// Range of signed int is -32768 to 32767
unsigned int num5;// Range of unsigned int is 0 - 65535.
unsigned long int num6;// Range of unsigned int is 0 to 4294967295.

Memory occupied by Integer

• short int (1 Byte = 8 Bits)
• int or signed int (2 Bytes = 16 Bits )
• long int or signed long int (4 Bytes = 32 Bits)

The float data type is used to store fractional numbers (real numbers). Floating point numbers are denoted by the keyword float. The double is same as float but it takes double space (8 bytes) than float.

float  <variable name>	/*	Syntax	*/

float  num1;//  Range of float is 3.4 e-38 to 3.4 e+38
double  int num2;// Range of double is 1.7e-308 to 1.7e+308
long double int num3;// Range of long double is 3.4 e-4932 to 3.4 e+4932

Memory occupied by Float

• float (4 Bytes = 32 Bits)
• double (8 Bytes = 64 Bits)
• long double (10 Bytes = 80 Bits)

Character type variable can hold a single character. As there are singed and unsigned int (either short or long), in the same way there are signed and unsigned chars; both occupy 1 byte each, but having different ranges. Unsigned characters have values between 0 and 255, signed characters have values from –128 to 127. Character is declared by char.

char <variable name>	/*	Syntax	*/

char ch;	//  Range of char is -128 to 127
unsigned char name;	//  Range of unsigned char float is 0 to 255

Memory occupied by char

• char or unsigned char (1 Byte = 8 Bits)