DATA TYPES IN C Data types are the storage representation of the variables used in the program.

Use of data types specifies no. of bytes taken by any variable in the memory. In C there are 4 basic types of data types 1. 2. 3. 4. Primitive Data type Non-Primitive Data type User-Defined Data type Empty Data Type

Primitive Data Type It is also known as Primary data type. All C compilers support 4 fundamental data types namely; integer, character, floating point & double precision floating point. Integer types Integers are whole nos. with a range of value supported by a particular machine. Generally, integer occupies one word of storage. It takes 2 bytes. If we use 16-bit word length the size of integer value is limited to the range -32768 to 32767. Similarly, a 32-bit word length can store an integer ranging from -2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647. Character types A single character can be defined as a character type data. Characters are usually stored in 8-bits of internal storage. Characters have values from -128 to 127 or from 0 to 255. Floating Point types Floating point numbers are stored in 4 bytes or 32-bits, with 6 digits of precisions. Floating point numbers are defined in C by the keyword float. A double data type number uses 64-bits giving a precision of 14-bits. Non Primitive Data Type These are also known as Derived data type. It consists of arrays, structures and unions. Arrays Array is actually a collection of similar data type and memory for an array is allocated on contiguous spaces. Structures Structure is a collection of fields in which the fields may be same or of different types.

User-Defined Data Types C support user-defined data types. Once a user-defined type has been established, then new variables, array, structures etc. can be declared in the terms of this new data type. In C language user-defined data types are: typedef & enum. typedef typedef is an abbreviation used for Type Definition. Its purpose is to redefine the name of an existing data type. This can be later used to declare variables. Its general form is: typedef standard-datatype userdefined-datatype. Ex: (i) typedef int age; int x; age p,q,r,s; Here, all the variables are holding integer value but age helps us to understand that these 4 variables will hold age. It helps users debugging the program. (ii) struct student { char name [30]; int roll_no; float percent; }; struct student s; Using typedef: struct student { char name [30]; int roll_no; float percent; }; typedef struct student STU; STU s1, s2; enum The enumerated data type gives us an opportunity to invent our own data type and define what values the variables of this data type can take. Its general form is: enum datatype-name {val1,val2,..,valn}; Ex:(i) enum weekdays {Sunday, Monday, Thursday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday}; weekdays x, y;

(ii) enum marks { gradeA=1, gradeB=2, gradeC=3 }; enum marks s1, s2; The values declared by enum are ordinal nos. Ordinal values starts from zero. Empty Data Type The keyword void can be used as a type specifier, when defining a function that does not return anything. The keyword void is the example of empty data type. Ex: void main ()