Data type modifiers

Data type modifiers in C

In c language Data Type Modifiers are keywords used to change the properties of current properties of data type. Data type modifiers are classified into following types.

• long
• short
• unsigned
• signed

Modifiers are prefixed with basic data types to modify (either increase or decrease) the amount of storage space allocated to a variable.

For example, storage space for int data type is 4 byte for 32 bit processor. We can increase the range by using long int which is 8 byte. We can decrease the range by using short int which is 2 byte.

long:

This can be used to increased size of the current data type to 2 more bytes, which can be applied on int or double data types. For example int occupy 2 byte of memory if we use long with integer variable then it occupy 4 byte of memory.

long a;  --> by default which represent long int.

short

In general int data type occupies different memory spaces for a different operating system; to allocate fixed memory space short keyword can be used.

short int a; --> occupies 2 bytes of memory space in every operating system.

unsigned

This keyword can be used to make the accepting values of a data type is positive data type.

unsigned int a =100;	// right
unsigned int a=-100;	// wrong

Signed

This keyword accepts both negative or positive value and this is default properties or data type modifiers for every data type.

int a=10;	// right
int a=-10;	// right
signed int a=10;	// right
signed int a=-10; 	// right

Note: in real time no need to write signed keyword explicitly for any data type.