Dev C++ Variable Types
May 19, 2017 All variables use data-type during declaration to restrict the type of data to be stored. Therefore, we can say that data types are used to tell the variables the type of data it can store. Whenever a variable is defined in C, the compiler allocates some memory for that variable based on the data-type with which it is declared. Size of Variables The size of different types can be discovered with the sizeof operator. It returns the size of the variable ( or structure) in bytes (8 bits). Running on the dev C compiler I get: char 1 bool 1 short 2 int 4 long 4 float 4 double 8 Press any key to continue. Declaring Variables In general variables may be declared. Learn All About Data Types In C With Examples. In this Complete C Training Tutorials, we will discuss data types in C in this tutorial. We have already seen identifiers that are used to identify various entities in C by name. Apart from the identifiers, we also know that the variable store's information or data. Mar 18, 2020 A variable provides us with a named storage capability. It allows programmer to manipulate data as per the need. Every variable in C has a type. The variable type helps to determine the size and layout of the variable's memory map, the range of values that can be stored within that memory, and the set of operations that can be applied to it. This tutorial will brief you about the various Data Types in C in detail with easy examples for clear understanding. Data Types are used to tell the variable what type of data it should store.
Variables, types, and operators Lecture3 CS 113 – Fall 2007 2 AnnouncementsAnnouncements Assignment 1 online, due next Wednesday Check newsgroup for clarifications, corrections, etc. Need a partner? Check newsgroup. C compiler options Dev-C is now installed in CIT lab in Phillips 318 Xcode on Macs in CIT labs.
Typecasting is making a variable of one type, such as an int, act like another type, a char, for one single operation. To typecast something, simply put the type of variable you want the actual variable to act as inside parentheses in front of the actual variable. (char)a will make 'a' function as a char.For example: One use for typecasting for is when you want to use the ASCII characters. For example, what if you want to create your own chart of all 128 ASCII characters. To do this, you will need to use to typecast to allow you to print out the integer as its character equivalent. The typecast described above is a C-style cast, C++ supports two other types. First is the function-style cast: This is more like a function call than a cast as the type to be cast to is like the name of the function and the value to be cast is like the argument to the function. Next is the named cast, of which there are four: static_cast is similar in function to the other casts described above, but thename makes it easier to spot and less tempting to use since it tends to beugly. Typecasting should be avoided whenever possible. The other three typesof named casts are const_cast, reinterpret_cast, and dynamic_cast. They are ofno use to us at this time.
Typecasts in practice
So when exactly would a typecast come in handy? One use of typecastsis to force the correct type of mathematical operation to take place. Itturns out that in C and C++ (and other programming languages), the result ofthe division of integers is itself treated as an integer: for instance, 3/5becomes 0! Why? Well, 3/5 is less than 1, and integer division ignores theremainder.On the other hand, it turns out that division between floating point numbers,or even between one floating point number and an integer, is sufficient tokeep the result as a floating point number. So if we were performing somekind of fancy division where we didn't want truncated values, we'd have tocast one of the variables to a floating point type. For instance,static_cast<float>(3)/5comes out to .6, as you would expect!
When might this come up? It's often reasonable to store two values inintegers. For instance, if you were tracking heart patients, you mighthave a function to compute their age in years and the number of heart timesthey'd come in for heart pain. One operation you might conceivably want toperform is to compute the number of times per year of life someone has come into see their physician about heart pain. What would this look like?The problem is that when this program is run, visits_per_year will be zerounless the patient had an awful lot of visits to the doc. The way to getaround this problem is to cast one of the values being divided so it getstreated as a floating point number, which will cause the compiler to treat theexpression as if it were to result in a floating point number:This would cause the correct values to be stored in visits_per_year. Can youthink of another solution to this problem (in this case)?
Quiz yourself
Previous: File I/O
Next: Classes
Back to C++ Tutorial Index
Variables are an extremely core concept to most object orientated programming languages. I like to visualize a variable much like a box. We can put things in the box, we can take things out of the box, and at any point we can see what is inside the box. Each box also has a name to which we can refer to it by, and in C++, each box can only hold a certain type of data.
When we create variables we call this the variable declaration, and then when we set them for the first time, we call this the initialization. To declare a variable in C++, we write the function. Traktor pro buy online. To declare a basic integer variable called 'age', we could write the following:
From this point we can then refer to the variable by its name, so in this case, we can just write 'age' whenever we want to refer to the variable. To initialise the variable we can write its name, followed by the equals sign, followed by the value we want to set the variable to (followed by a semicolon). The value we set it to can be a constant (a value that doesn't change), or another variable of the same type. An operator is a symbol which has a certain meaning in the programming language, in this case, the equals operator, represented by the =
symbol, is an operator which sets whatever is on the left of the operator to whatever is on the right.
C Programming Variable Types
The constant value we set the variable to depends on the to 5 with something like the following:
We can actually combine the variable declaration and initialization into one more-compact line, like the following:
The 'age' variable now contains the number '5', and we can refer to this '5' by writing 'age' anywhere in our program. We can also change the value of the variable at any point by using the equals operator as we did for the first initialization:
Although this seems purely for convenience at the moment (as we could just write '5', '3', or '21' in place of 'age'), trust me when I say that these become extremely useful and powerful when you start dealing with dynamic logic and user input (the latter of which we'll be covering later in this tutorial).
Just to give an example of accessing the contents of variables by using their names, we could create a new variable called 'age_two' which is set to the value of 'age', and then we can also try outputting one or both of these variables:
To be clear, all this code should be going into the basic program structure which we learnt how to create in the last tutorial. So we want our 'iostream' include for cout
, cin
, and some other stuff, we want the std
namespace, and we want the majority of our code to be going in our 'main' function. So our full code to demonstrate variables so far, which you can compile and run at any point to test the functionality, is as follows:
Some number variables can handle positive and negative numbers, whereas 'unsigned' number variables can only handle positive numbers, although because of this restriction, can hold larger numbers. You can write the signed
or unsigned
keywords before the and 'short' - numbers with a decimal place in. Floats are accurate to around 6 or 7 digits and are declared using the float
type. Float constants can be defined by simply writing a number with a decimal point followed by the 'f' notation. An example of a simple float declaration and initialization to a float constant is as follows:
C++ Variable Types Size
Care must be taken, however, with float (and other decimal) operations, as rounding and precision problems to do with how the numbers are stored can trip you up (we don't have infinite memory for recurring decimals like 1/3
for example) -- I recommend reading this article for more information on this if you're interested.
Doubles
The 'double' or 'e'. Character variables are declared by using the char
type, and character constants are defined by using single quotes (apostrophes) around the character. An example of character declaration and initialization to a character constant is as follows:
Strings
The lastve talked about string variables in relation to cout
before, and as such you should know that string constants are defined by using double quotes. String variables are declared by using the string
type, however as strings aren't actually 'primitive' types in C++ (and are instead defined by the standard library of stuff that comes bundled with C++), you are required to #include <string>
to use thist strings aren't massively useful, but this is just because we don't really know how to utilize all the functionality of different data-types yet - for example, we don't know how to perform simple mathematics on number types, or how to check the value of booleans to change the logic of the program. All will be revealed in future tutorials.