What about that first part of our template type (from type variable_name)? We saw some examples in the previous exercise when you corrected the bad variable names, but let’s talk about what they are.
The type of a variable denotes what kind of information can be stored in it. C has a good number of types you can use, but in this lesson, we will go over some of the most common ones: int, float, double, and char.
In C, you must specify the type of the variable when you declare it. Once it is set, that type of information is the only type that can go into that variable. So if you create a variable of type int, which can only store whole numbers, you will not be able to store "a" nor 1.2 in it. The table below details these types we are going over and what information can go into each.
| Type | Description | Values |
|---|---|---|
int |
a whole number | -2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647 |
float |
a number with possible decimals | 6 decimal places |
double |
a number with possible decimals | 15 decimal places |
char |
stores one character (letter or number) | a single character |
There are a few questions you might be asking yourself looking at these descriptions. What’s the difference between a float and a double? We are going to look at this in the next exercise. char holds a single letter or number, but what if you want to store something like a person’s name, that is more than one character (in most cases)? That gets a bit more technical and you will learn about how that works in the lesson on strings later in the course!
Instructions
The code in the editor is ready to display basic information about an imaginary student. The problem is the programmer forgot to declare the data types for each variable at the top of the program, so it will fail with errors.
Go in and add appropriate data types to each variable so when you run the application the program completes and student information is displayed.