Contents

Section 2.1 Primitive Built-in Types

Section 2.2 Variables

Section 2.3 Compound Types

Section 2.4 const Qualifier

Section 2.5 Dealing with Types

Section 2.6 Defining Our Own Data Structures

Chapter Summary

Defined Terms

Types are fundamental to any program: They tell us what our data mean and what operations we can perform on those data.

C++ has extensive support for types. The language defines several primitive types (characters, integers, floating-point numbers, etc.) and provides mechanisms that let us define our own data types. The library uses these mechanisms to define more complicated types such as variable-length character strings, vectors, and so on. This chapter covers the built-in types and begins our coverage of how C++ supports more complicated types.

Types determine the meaning of the data and operations in our programs. The meaning of even as simple a statement as

i = i + j;

depends on the types of i and j. If i and j are integers, this statement has the ordinary, arithmetic meaning of +. However, if i and j are Sales_item objects (§ 1.5.1, p. 20), this statement adds the components of these two objects.