The data type supported in a language dictates the type of values which can be processed by the language.
C supports several different types of data, each of which may be represented differently within the computers memory.
Data types are means to identify the type of data and associated operations for handling it. Every variable in C has a data types.
Floating point data type store numerical values with a fractional portion.
There are two types of floating data types named float and double. These may also have the qualifier long.
Long float may be equivalent to double and long double may be equivalent to double, or it may refer to a separate, "extralarge" double-precision data type requiring more than 8 bytes of memory.
Floating point numbers are essantially signed and it is used to store a real numbers.
Size and range of Integer type on 16-bit machine are given below:
| Type | Size(bytes) | Range |
|---|---|---|
| Float | 4 | 3.4E-38 to 3.4E+38 |
| double | 8 | 1.7E-308 to 1.7E+308 |
| long double | 10 | 3.4E-4932 to 1.1E+4932 |