Sizeofsizeof is a unary operator in the programming languages C and C++. It generates the storage size of an expression or a data type, measured in the number of char-sized units. Consequently, the construct sizeof (char) is guaranteed to be 1. The actual number of bits of type char is specified by the preprocessor macro , defined in the standard limits.h. On most modern computing platforms this is eight bits. The result of sizeof has an unsigned integer type that is usually denoted by size_t.
Nullable typeNullable types are a feature of some programming languages which allow a value to be set to the special value NULL instead of the usual possible values of the data type. In statically typed languages, a nullable type is an option type, while in dynamically typed languages (where values have types, but variables do not), equivalent behavior is provided by having a single null value. NULL is frequently used to represent a missing value or invalid value, such as from a function that failed to return or a missing field in a database, as in NULL in SQL.
Product typeIn programming languages and type theory, a product of types is another, compounded, type in a structure. The "operands" of the product are types, and the structure of a product type is determined by the fixed order of the operands in the product. An instance of a product type retains the fixed order, but otherwise may contain all possible instances of its primitive data types. The expression of an instance of a product type will be a tuple, and is called a "tuple type" of expression.
Single-precision floating-point formatSingle-precision floating-point format (sometimes called FP32 or float32) is a computer number format, usually occupying 32 bits in computer memory; it represents a wide dynamic range of numeric values by using a floating radix point. A floating-point variable can represent a wider range of numbers than a fixed-point variable of the same bit width at the cost of precision. A signed 32-bit integer variable has a maximum value of 231 − 1 = 2,147,483,647, whereas an IEEE 754 32-bit base-2 floating-point variable has a maximum value of (2 − 2−23) × 2127 ≈ 3.
Composite data typeIn computer science, a composite data type or compound data type is any data type which can be constructed in a program using the programming language's primitive data types and other composite types. It is sometimes called a structure or aggregate type, although the latter term may also refer to arrays, lists, etc. The act of constructing a composite type is known as composition. Composite data types are often contrasted with scalar variables. A struct is C's and C++'s notion of a composite type, a datatype that composes a fixed set of labeled fields or members.
Expression (computer science)In computer science, an expression is a syntactic entity in a programming language that may be evaluated to determine its value. It is a combination of one or more constants, variables, functions, and operators that the programming language interprets (according to its particular rules of precedence and of association) and computes to produce ("to return", in a stateful environment) another value. This process, for mathematical expressions, is called evaluation.
Bit fieldA bit field is a data structure that consists of one or more adjacent bits which have been allocated for specific purposes, so that any single bit or group of bits within the structure can be set or inspected. A bit field is most commonly used to represent integral types of known, fixed bit-width, such as single-bit Booleans. The meaning of the individual bits within the field is determined by the programmer; for example, the first bit in a bit field (located at the field's base address) is sometimes used to determine the state of a particular attribute associated with the bit field.
