Basic Data Types

Basic Data Types:

C++ provides a rather large number of types. However, you can write perfectly good programs using only five of those:

Here are some examples of declaring and initializing variables:

int age = 28;

double price = 8.99;

char grade = 'A';

std::string message = "Game Over";

bool late_to_work = true;

Copy to clipboard
Copy to clipboard

Datatype Modifiers:

As the name implies, datatype modifiers are used with built-in data types to modify the length of data that a particular data type can hold. Data type modifiers in C++ are:

• signed
• unsigned
• short
• long

We will learn about these in a bit!

Const:

const (constant) variables cannot be changed by your program during execution.

const double quarter = 0.25;

// and now variable quarter can only be 0.25

Copy to clipboard
Copy to clipboard

Simply add the keyword const before the data type during declaration to make the variable not modifiable.

Type Conversion:

A type cast is basically a conversion from one type to another.

The notation (type) value means “convert value to type“. So for example:

double weight1;
int weight2;

weight1 = 154.49;
weight2 = (int) weight1;

// weight2 is now 154

Copy to clipboard
Copy to clipboard

Note: Going from a double to an int simply removes the decimal. There’s no rounding involved.