A quick detour - Data Types
in Cpp-tutorial on C++
Some data types, including some that you might not have seen.
A Quick recap
So basically, a data type is supposed to be something that tells the type of data you’re dealing with.
I’ll only be talking about Primitive data types today, as anything else would be too advanced for this beginner tutorial.
So here goes:
| Data Type | Explanation |
|---|---|
bool |
Boolean |
int |
Integer type |
float |
Floating point |
double |
Floating point, but with greater accuracy |
void |
Valueless |
char |
Character |
wchar_t |
Wide Character |
Detailed Explanations
bool Data Type
The bool data type is used for explicitly or implicitly declaring whether a particular value is true or false.
It itself can be declared and initialised like this:
bool var = false
or
bool var = true
It has 1 bit of information.
int Data Type
The int data type is the one that most visitors of this site would be familiar with. It is used to store integer values that can vary from -2^8 to 2^7. It normally carries 4 bytes of information.
float Data Type
The float data type is used to store floating point, i.e., Decimal point values.
It can carry 4 bits of information.
double Data Type
The double data type is used when float doesn’t give the accuracy you need. That’s becuase double can store 8 bytes of information.
void Data Type
void is somewhat interesting, because void is used when there is no info to be stored. To be more blunt, there is nothing it can store.
Keeps you thinking on why exactly it’s called a data type, then, right?
char Data Type
char is used to store a single character. Therefore, it is 1 byte long.
wchar_t Data Type
Used to denote a wide character, for example, character sets that are older and predate UTF-8, and are also bigger than UTF-8. Don’t use it unless you need to.
Some Other Data Types
Here, I’ll talk about some Data types that I think are too advanced to include in the previous section. Feel free to skip this if don’t want to read it.
Character Types
Some other, not-so-basic character types are given below.
| Data Types | Description |
|---|---|
char16_t |
Stores more than char, no less than 16 bits (2 bytes) of storage |
char32_t |
Stores more than char16_t, no less than 32 bits (4 bytes of storage) |
char64_t |
Stores more than char64_t, no less than 64 bits (8 bytes of storage) |
Integer Types
| Data Types | Description |
|---|---|
long int |
Stores more than int (At least 4 bytes) |
long long int |
Stores more than long int (At least 8 bytes) |
Any other Data type that I have not mentioned in here has a very niche usage, or I have not come across a good reason to include that Data type in here.