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Erle Robotics C++ GitBook

Data Types

Every expression has a type – a formal description of what kind of data its value is. For instance, 0 is an integer, 3.142 is a floating-point (decimal) number, and "Hello, world!\n" is a string value (a sequence of characters).

Data of different types take a different amounts of memory to store. Here are the built-in datatypes we will use most often:

Type Names Description Size Range
char Single text character or small integer.Indicated with single quotes (’a’, ’3’). 1 byte signed: -128 to 127 unsigned: 0 to 255
int Larger integer. 4 bytes signed: -2147483648 to 2147483647 unsigned: 0 to 4294967295
bool Boolean (true/false). Indi­cated with the keywords true and false. 1 byte Just true (1) or false (0).
double “Doubly” precise floating point number. 8 bytes +/- 1.7e +/- 308 ( 15 digits)

Notes on this table:

  • A signed integer is one that can represent a negative number; an unsigned integer will never be interpreted as negative, so it can represent a wider range of positive numbers. Most compilers assume signed if unspecified.
  • There are actually 3 integer types: short, int, and long, in non-decreasing order of size (int is usually a synonym for one of the other two). You generally don’t need to worry about which kind to use unless you’re worried about memory usage or you’re using really huge numbers. The same goes for the 3 floating point types, float, double, and long double, which are in non-decreasing order of precision (there is usually some imprecision in representing real numbers on a computer).
  • The sizes/ranges for each type are not fully standardized; those shown above are the ones used on most 32-bit computers. An operation can only be performed on compatible types. You can add 34 and 3, but you can’t take the remainder of an integer and a floating-point number.

An operator also normally produces a value of the same type as its operands; thus, 1 / 4 evaluates to 0 because with two integer operands, / truncates the result to an integer. To get 0.25, you’d need to write something like 1 / 4.0. A text string, has the type char *.