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In this C Tutorial we will learn what Fundamental Data Types are and how to use them.

We develop programs to accept an input from the user and then run the input through a series of processes and produce the output on screen or on the printer, etc.

INPUT > PROCESS > OUTPUT

From the user’s point of view, the input supplied is data, which requires to be processed. Depending on the input provided by the user i.e. a number, fractional number, a name or an address, etc., the program must be designed to hold all these inputs. C provides the programmer with four basic or fundamental types of container to hold data, which are as follows:

Following is the explanation of data types:

Character data type (char)

The character data type is only 1 Byte in size. It is used for only storing characters.

Integer Data type (int)

The integer data type is used to store whole numbers only. Fractional numbers are not allowed in an int data type.

Data type to store fractional numbers

float

The float data type is used to store floating point numbers or fractional numbers. This data type is 4 Bytes in size. Floating point numbers can also be expressed in the scientific notation e.g. 1.7e4 represents the number 1.7 x 10⁴.

double

The double data type is also used to store floating point numbers or a fractional numbers. This data type is 8 Bytes in size. This data type can hold a large value.

This was about fundamental data types in c. In the subsequent C Tutorials we will learn how to use these data types by creating variables.

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