Understanding C Datatypes

As the name suggests, a Datatype defines the type of data being used. Whenever we define a variable or use any data in the C language program, we have to specify the type of the data, so that the compiler knows what type of data to expect.

For example, you may want to use a number like 1, 2, 100, or a decimal point number like 99.95, 10.5, or a text, like “Studytonight”, all these values are handled differently by the C language compiler, hence, we use data types to define the type of data used in any program.

C Datatypes

Broadly, there are 5 different categories of data types in the C language, they are:

Type	Example
Basic	character, integer, floating-point, double.
Derived	Array, structure, union, etc.
Enumeration	enums
Bool type	true or false
void	Empty value

C Primary Data types:

The C language has 5 basic (primary or primitive) data types, they are:

1. Character – ASCII character set or generally a single alphabet like ‘a’, ‘B’, etc.
2. Integer – Used to store whole numbers like 1, 2, 100, 1000, etc.
3. Floating-point – Decimal point or real numbers values like 99.9, 10.5, etc.
4. Double – Very large numeric values which are not allowed in Integer or Floating point type.
5. Void – This means no value. This data type is mostly used when we define functions.

There are different keywords to specify these data types, the keywords are:

Datatype	Keyword
Character	char
Integer	int
Floating-point	float
Double	double
Void	void