C Data Types

Data types is simply used to declared variables or the functions. The variable type specifies that how much space it will occupy in the storage and how the bit pattern stored is interpreted. C defines the following five basic data types:

• character - declared using char
• integer - declared using int
• floating-point - declared using float
• double floating-point - declared using double
• valueless - declared using void

Except the type void, the basic data types may have various modifiers preceding them. A type modifier changes the meaning of the base type to more precisely fit a specific need. Here is the list of modifiers:

• signed
• unsigned
• long
• short

The int base type can be modified by signed, short, long, and unsigned. And the char type can be modified by signed and unsigned. You may also apply long to double.

C Data Types with Size and their Ranges

Following table lists all the data types with their sizes and ranges :

Signed integers are important for a great many algorithms, but they only have half the absolute magnitude of their unsigned relatives. For instance, here 32,767 in binary is:

0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1   1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

When type modifier doesn't precede a basic type, then int is assumed. Let's look at the following table:

Get Exact Size of Any Data Type in C

Since int data type has the different size on the different platform, so to get the exact or actual size of an int type or an int type variable on a particular platform, use the sizeof operator. The expressions sizeof(type) i.e., sizeof(int) tells the storage size of an object or type in bytes. Following example shows how to get the exact size of an int type on any platform:

#include<stdio.h>
#include<conio.h>

void main()
{
   clrscr();

   printf("Storage size of int: %d\n", sizeof(int));
   
   getch();
}

Here is the sample output of the above C program:

C Online Test