First Steps in (C) Programming, conclusion - Unsigned Integers: Using Positive Integers

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If you’re sure that you’ll be dealing with just positive integers, there’s a way of increasing the maximum value that you can use. Theunsigned modifier can be used with all of the basic integer types that I’ve covered, to define types that store only positive integers. This allows you to handle integers roughly twice as large as you otherwise might. You use theunsignedmodifier as follows:

unsigned char a_value;     /* Can be from 0 to +255    */
unsigned int number;       /* Can be from 0 to +65,535 */
unsigned long big_number;  /* Can be from 0 to 4,294,967,295 */

You must be absolutely sure that you need only positive values if you want to use these. Unsigned variables can’t store negative values at all.

When you want to specify an integer constant as unsigned, you append the letterUas upper- or lowercase to the numeric value. For example, you could write

number = 25U;

This sets the unsigned variablenumberof typeintto 25.

If you want to define a constant that is of typeunsigned long, you need a Uand an Las a suffix to the numeric value. You can specify the letters in upper- or lowercase, for example:

big_number = 100000000UL;

This stores the value 100,000,000 in the variablebig_number.

You use the format specifier%uto output an unsigned integer. You can also include a field width specification and a-for left alignment in the field if you wish.

For example, you could output the value of the unsigned integer variable callednumberwith this statement:

printf("The value of number is %-12u", number);

The field width is 12 here and the value will be left-aligned in the field.

I’ve now covered all the numeric data types in C; Table 2-6 presents all of them.

Table 2-6.Numeric Data Types

Variable Type	Keyword	Number of Bytes	Range of Values
Character	char	1	–128 to +127 or 0 to 255
Unsigned character	unsigned char	1	0 to 255
Integer	int	2 or 4	–32,768 to +32,767 or –2,147,438,648 to +2,147,438,647
Unsigned integer	unsigned int	2 or 4	0 to 65,535 or 0 to 4,294,967,295
Short integer	short	2	–32,768 to +32,767
Unsigned short integer	unsigned short	2	0 to 65,535
Long integer	long	4	–2,147,438,648 to +2,147,438,647
Unsigned long integer	unsigned long	4	0 to 4,294,967,295
Single precision floating-point	float	4	±3.4E38 (6 digits)
Double precision floating-point	double	8	±1.7E308 (15 digits)
Extended double precision floating-point	long double	10	±1.2E4932 (19 digits)

Finding the Limits

I mentioned earlier and in various other places in this chapter how the limits for the range of values for some of these numerical types can vary from one system and/or compiler to another. This is obviously going to be a problem in some situations in which you really need to be able to determine within your program what the limits are in a particular instance. The C standard library includes header files that can provide you with this information. Thelimits.hheader file provides information about integer types and thefloat.hheader file does the same for floating-point types.

Thelimits.hheader file contains definitions for symbols (not variables) such that define the upper and lower limits for each signed integer type. For instance,INT_MINandINT_MAXare the symbols representing the upper and lower limits for typeint, andCHAR_MINandCHAR_MAXrepresent the limits for typechar. For unsigned types only symbols for upper limits are defined because the lower limit is always zero. There are symbols with similarly formed names for each of the integer types in Table 2-6.

In thefloat.hheader are symbols with the namesFLT_MINandFLT_MAXthat represent the minimum and maximum positive values of typefloat. There are similar symbols such as DBL_MIN,DBL_MAX,LDBL_MIN, andLDBL_MAXfor thedoubleandlong doubletypes. If you look in the documentation for the library that comes with your compiler, you’ll find many other symbols that represent values for other parameters relating to the implementation of the floating-point types on your system.

Let’s see how you can access some of these with an example.

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Next: Try It Out: Finding the Limits >>
 

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This article is excerpted from chapter two of the book Beginning C, written by Ivor Horton (Apress, 2004; ISBN: 1590592530). Check it out at your favorite bookstore. Buy this book now.