Topic summary
Data types
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Data type.
Concept
Data types are used within type systems, which offer various ways of defining, implementing, and using them. In a type system, a data type represents a constraint placed upon the interpretation of data, describing representation, interpretation and structure of values or objects stored in computer memory. The type system uses data type information to check correctness of computer programs that access or manipulate the data. A compiler may use the static type of a value to optimize the storage it needs and the choice of algorithms for operations on the value. In many C compilers the float data type, for example, is represented in 32 bits, in accord with the IEEE specification for single-precision floating point numbers. They will thus use floating-point-specific microprocessor operations on those values (floating-point addition, multiplication, etc.).