The Fundamental Data Types

C++ has a built-in set of data types, as shown in the table below.

Type	Description	Comments
bool	A Boolean type that can contain the values true or false
char	A character type that can hold ASCII values	Values can range from -128 to +127.
short	An integral type; stores whole numbers	Values can range from -32,768 to +32,767. An unsigned short can range from 0 to 65,535.
int	An integral type; stores whole numbers	Values can range from -2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647. An unsigned int can range from 0 to 4,294,967,295.
long	An integral type like int, except on many compilers, it’s twice the size	In Microsoft Visual C++, the long is the same size as the int. And therefore it can only store the same range of values.
__int8	A Microsoft-specific integral type, synonymous with the char data type
__int16	A Microsoft-specific integral type, synonymous with the short data type
__int32	A Microsoft-specific integral type, synonymous with the int data type
__int64	A Microsoft-specific integral type that stores whole numbers	Values can range from -9,223,372,036,854,775,808 to 9,223,372,036,854,775,807.
float	Stores floating point numbers, for example, 3.7	In Visual C++, the float stores up to seven decimal places. The range of values is 3.4E+/-38.
double	Stores floating point numbers like the float but with greater precision and more accuracy	The double can store up to 15 decimal places. The range of values is 1.7E+/-308
wchar_t	A wide character or multibyte character type

From these built-in types, you can construct other types, as we’ll see in this chapter:

• Pointer types, for example, int*

• Array types, for example, int[]

• Reference types, for example, double&

Or you can construct user-defined types by creating data structures and classes. Classes were introduced in Chapter 2 and will be elaborated upon in Chapter 6. Structs are covered in Chapter 9.