Data type

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In computer science and computer programming, a data type or simply type is a classification
identifying one of various types of data, such as real, integer or Boolean, that determines the possible
values for that type; the operations that can be done on values of that type; the meaning of the data; and
the way values of that type can be stored.[1][2]

Contents
1 Overview
2 Definition of a "type"
3 Classes of data types
3.1 Primitive data types
3.1.1 Machine data types
3.1.2 Boolean type
3.1.3 Numeric types
3.2 Composite types
3.2.1 Enumerations
3.2.2 String and text types
3.3 Other types
3.3.1 Pointers and references
3.3.2 Function types
3.4 Abstract data types
3.5 Utility types
4 Type systems
5 See also
6 References
7 Further reading

Overview
Data types are used within type systems, which offer various ways of defining, implementing and using
them. Different type systems ensure varying degrees of type safety.

Almost all programming languages explicitly include the notion of data type, though different languages
may use different terminology. Common data types include:

integers,
booleans,
characters,
floating­point numbers,
alphanumeric strings.
For example, in the Java programming language, the "int" type represents the set of 32­bit integers
ranging in value from ­2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647, as well as the operations that can be performed
on integers, such as addition, subtraction, and multiplication. Colors, on the other hand, are represented
by three bytes denoting the amounts each of red, green, and blue, and one string representing that color's
name; allowable operations include addition and subtraction, but not multiplication.

Most programming languages also allow the programmer to define additional data types, usually by
combining multiple elements of other types and defining the valid operations of the new data type. For
example, a programmer might create a new data type named "complex number" that would include real
and imaginary parts. A data type also represents a constraint placed upon the interpretation of data in a
type system, 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.

Most data types in statistics have comparable types in computer programming, and vice versa, as shown
in the following table:

Statistics Programming
real­valued (interval scale)
floating­point
real­valued (ratio scale)
count data (usually non­negative) integer
binary data Boolean
categorical data enumerated type
random vector list or array
random matrix two­dimensional array
random tree tree

Definition of a "type"
(Parnas, Shore & Weiss 1976) identified five definitions of a "type" that were used—sometimes
implicitly—in the literature:

Syntactic
A type is a purely syntactic label associated with a variable when it is declared. Such definitions of
"type" do not give any semantic meaning to types.
Representation
A type is defined in terms of its composition of more primitive types—often machine types.
Representation and behaviour
A type is defined as its representation and a set of operators manipulating these representations.
Value space
A type is a set of possible values which a variable can possess. Such definitions make it possible
to speak about (disjoint) unions or Cartesian products of types.
Value space and behaviour
A type is a set of values which a variable can possess and a set of functions that one can apply to
these values.

The definition in terms of a representation was often done in imperative languages such as ALGOL and
Pascal, while the definition in terms of a value space and behaviour was used in higher­level languages
such as Simula and CLU.
Classes of data types
Primitive data types

Main article: Primitive data type

Machine data types

All data in computers based on digital electronics is represented as bits (alternatives 0 and 1) on the
lowest level. The smallest addressable unit of data is usually a group of bits called a byte (usually an
octet, which is 8 bits). The unit processed by machine code instructions is called a word (as of 2011,
typically 32 or 64 bits). Most instructions interpret the word as a binary number, such that a 32­bit word
can represent unsigned integer values from 0 to or signed integer values from to
. Because of two's complement, the machine language and machine doesn't need to distinguish
between these unsigned and signed data types for the most part.

There is a specific set of arithmetic instructions that use a different interpretation of the bits in word as a
floating­point number.

Machine data types need to be exposed or made available in systems or low­level programming
languages, allowing fine­grained control over hardware. The C programming language, for instance,
supplies integer types of various widths, such as short and long. If a corresponding native type does not
exist on the target platform, the compiler will break them down into code using types that do exist. For
instance, if a 32­bit integer is requested on a 16 bit platform, the compiler will tacitly treat it as an array
of two 16 bit integers.

Several languages allow binary and hexadecimal literals, for convenient manipulation of machine data.

In higher level programming, machine data types are often hidden or abstracted as an implementation
detail that would render code less portable if exposed. For instance, a generic numeric type might be
supplied instead of integers of some specific bit­width.

Boolean type

The Boolean type represents the values true and false. Although only two values are possible, they are
rarely implemented as a single binary digit for efficiency reasons. Many programming languages do not
have an explicit boolean type, instead interpreting (for instance) 0 as false and other values as true.

Numeric types

Such as:

The integer data types, or "whole numbers". May be sub­typed according to their ability to contain
negative values (e.g. unsigned in C and C++). May also have a small number of predefined
subtypes (such as short and long in C/C++); or allow users to freely define subranges such as
1..12 (e.g. Pascal/Ada).
Floating point data types, sometimes misleadingly called reals, contain fractional values. They
usually have predefined limits on both their maximum values and their precision. These are often
represented as decimal numbers.
Fixed point data types are convenient for representing monetary values. They are often
implemented internally as integers, leading to predefined limits.
 Bignum or arbitrary precision numeric types lack predefined limits. They are not primitive types,
and are used sparingly for efficiency reasons.

Composite types
Main article: Composite type

Composite types are derived from more than one primitive type. This can be done in a number of ways.
The ways they are combined are called data structures. Composing a primitive type into a compound
type generally results in a new type, e.g. array­of­integer is a different type to integer.

An array stores a number of elements of the same type in a specific order. They are accessed using
an integer to specify which element is required (although the elements may be of almost any type).
Arrays may be fixed­length or expandable.
Record (also called tuple or struct) Records are among the simplest data structures. A record is a
value that contains other values, typically in fixed number and sequence and typically indexed by
names. The elements of records are usually called fields or members.
Union. A union type definition will specify which of a number of permitted primitive types may
be stored in its instances, e.g. "float or long integer". Contrast with a record, which could be
defined to contain a float and an integer; whereas, in a union, there is only one value at a time.
A tagged union (also called a variant, variant record, discriminated union, or disjoint union)
contains an additional field indicating its current type, for enhanced type safety.
A set is an abstract data structure that can store certain values, without any particular order, and no
repeated values. Values themselves are not retrieved from sets, rather one tests a value for
membership to obtain a boolean "in" or "not in".
An object contains a number of data fields, like a record, and also a number of program code
fragments for accessing or modifying them. Data structures not containing code, like those above,
are called plain old data structure.

Many others are possible, but they tend to be further variations and compounds of the above.

Enumerations

Main article: Enumerated type

The enumerated type. This has values which are different from each other, and which can be compared
and assigned, but which do not necessarily have any particular concrete representation in the computer's
memory; compilers and interpreters can represent them arbitrarily. For example, the four suits in a deck
of playing cards may be four enumerators named CLUB, DIAMOND, HEART, SPADE, belonging to an
enumerated type named suit. If a variable V is declared having suit as its data type, one can assign any of
those four values to it. Some implementations allow programmers to assign integer values to the
enumeration values, or even treat them as type­equivalent to integers.

String and text types

Such as:

Alphanumeric character. A letter of the alphabet, digit, blank space, punctuation mark, etc.
Alphanumeric strings, a sequence of characters. They are typically used to represent words and
text.
Character and string types can store sequences of characters from a character set such as ASCII. Since
most character sets include the digits, it is possible to have a numeric string, such as "1234". However,
many languages would still treat these as belonging to a different type to the numeric value 1234.

Character and string types can have different subtypes according to the required character "width". The
original 7­bit wide ASCII was found to be limited, and superseded by 8 and 16­bit sets, which can
encode a wide variety of non­Latin alphabets (Hebrew, Chinese) and other symbols. Strings may be
either stretch­to­fit or of fixed size, even in the same programming language. They may also be subtyped
by their maximum size.

Note: strings are not primitive in all languages, for instance C: they may be composed from arrays of
characters.

Other types

Types can be based on, or derived from, the basic types explained above. In some languages, such as C,
functions have a type derived from the type of their return value.

Pointers and references

The main non­composite, derived type is the pointer, a data type whose value refers directly to (or
"points to") another value stored elsewhere in the computer memory using its address. It is a primitive
kind of reference. (In everyday terms, a page number in a book could be considered a piece of data that
refers to another one). Pointers are often stored in a format similar to an integer; however, attempting to
dereference or "look up" a pointer whose value was never a valid memory address would cause a
program to crash. To ameliorate this potential problem, pointers are considered a separate type to the
type of data they point to, even if the underlying representation is the same.

Function types

Main article: Function type

Abstract data types

Main article: Abstract data type

Any type that does not specify an implementation is an abstract data type. For instance, a stack (which is
an abstract type) can be implemented as an array (a contiguous block of memory containing multiple
values), or as a linked list (a set of non­contiguous memory blocks linked by pointers).

Abstract types can be handled by code that does not know or "care" what underlying types are contained
in them. Programming that is agnostic about concrete data types is called generic programming. Arrays
and records can also contain underlying types, but are considered concrete because they specify how
their contents or elements are laid out in memory.

Examples include:

A queue is a first­in first­out list. Variations are Deque and Priority queue.
A set can store certain values, without any particular order, and with no repeated values.
A stack is a last­in, first out data structure.
A tree is a hierarchical structure.
A graph.
 A hash, dictionary, map or associative array is a more flexible variation on a record, in which
name­value pairs can be added and deleted freely.
A smart pointer is the abstract counterpart to a pointer. Both are kinds of references.

Utility types

For convenience, high­level languages may supply ready­made "real world" data types, for instance
times, dates and monetary values and memory, even where the language allows them to be built from
primitive types.

Type systems
Main article: Type system

A type system associates types with each computed value. By examining the flow of these values, a type
system attempts to prove that no type errors can occur. The type system in question determines what
constitutes a type error, but a type system generally seeks to guarantee that operations expecting a
certain kind of value are not used with values for which that operation does not make sense.

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 single­precision floating point numbers.
They will thus use floating­point­specific microprocessor operations on those values (floating­point
addition, multiplication, etc.).

The depth of type constraints and the manner of their evaluation affect the typing of the language. A
programming language may further associate an operation with varying concrete algorithms on each
type in the case of type polymorphism. Type theory is the study of type systems, although the concrete
type systems of programming languages originate from practical issues of computer architecture,
compiler implementation, and language design.

Type systems may be variously static or dynamic, strong or weak typing, and so forth.

See also
C data types
Data dictionary
Functional programming
Kind
Type theory for the mathematical models of types
Type system for different choices in programming language typing

References
1. type ([Link] at the Free On­line Dictionary of Computing
2. Shaffer, C.A. Data Structures and Algorithms, 1.2

Further reading
Parnas, David L.; Shore, John E.; Weiss, David (1976). "Abstract types defined as classes of
 variables". Proceedings of the 1976 conference on Data : Abstraction, definition and structure:
149–154. doi:10.1145/800237.807133.
Cardelli, Luca; Wegner, Peter (December 1985). "On Understanding Types, Data Abstraction, and
Polymorphism" (PDF). ACM Computing Surveys (New York, NY, USA: ACM) 17 (4): 471–523.
doi:10.1145/6041.6042. ISSN 0360­0300.
Cleaveland, J. Craig (1986). An Introduction to Data Types. Addison­Wesley. ISBN 0201119404.

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This page was last modified on 19 October 2015, at 11:57.