Data Types in C Programming

In here we will learn about Data types in C Programming . What is Data Type? What is Primary and Derived Data Types in C Programming ? How to use sizeof operator?

C-Data Types: Data types specify how people enter data into our programs and what type of data is entering. In C it has some predefined set of data types to handle different data that we can use in our program. Each datatype has different storage capacities and ranges.It support 2 data types-

1.Primary data types: This is a fundamental data types in c like integer(int), Float(float), Double(double), character(char) and (void) types.

2.Derived data types: This data type is nothing but it is combinations of fundamental data types. Array, union, structure and pointer are Derived data types. .

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Primary Data Types

DATA TYPE	MEMORY (BYTES)	FORMAT SPECIFIER
short int	2	%hd
unsigned short int	2	%hu
int	4	%d
long int	4	%ld
long long int	8	%lld
unsigned long long int	8	%llu
char	1	%c
float	4	%f
double	8	%lf
long double	12	%Lf

Different data types have different ranges,format specifiers and how much memory it takes to store.This ranges may be different from compiler to compiler. We can use the sizeof() operator to check the size of a variable. See the following C program to check out which data types take how much memory:

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#include<stdio.h>
int main()
{
  printf("int takes: %lu bytes.\n",sizeof(int)); // '\n' is for goto new line 
  printf("float takes: %lu bytes.\n",sizeof(float));
  printf("double takes: %lu bytes.\n",sizeof(double));
  printf("char take: %lu byte.\n",sizeof(char));
  return 0;
}

Output:

  int takes: 4 bytes.
  float takes: 4 bytes.
  double takes: 8 bytes.
  char take: 1 byte.