Difference Between an Integer , short and long Variables

Primary Data Types themselves could be of several types. For example, a char could be an unsigned char or a signed char. Or an int could be a short int or long int. Due these variations in the primitive data types, its very difficult to understand the concept. So let us take a closer look at these variations of primary data types in the tutorial:

=> Integers , long and short:

• The range of an integer constant depends upon the compiler.

• For a 16 bit Compiler like Turbo C or Turbo C++ the range is -32768 to 32767. 

• For a 32 bit compiler like Visual Studio or gcc the range would be -2147483648 to 2147483647.

• C offers a variation of the Integer data type i.e short and long integer values. 

• The intention of providing these variations is to provide Integers with different ranges whenever possible. 

 

Each compiler can decide appropriate sizes of int , long and short depending on the operating system and hardware, for which it is being written, subject to following Rules:

• shorts are atleast 2 bytes big.

• longs are atleast 4 bytes big.

• shorts are never bigger than ints.

• ints are never bigger than longs.

Compiler	short	int	long
16-bit (Turbo C/C++)	2	2	4
32-bit (Visual Studio )	2	4	4

=> long Variables:

• long variables which hold long Integers are declared using the keyword long.

Example: 

               long int a;

               long int xyz; 

• long integers causes the Program to run a bit slower, but the Range of values that we can use is Expanded tremendously. 

• The value of long Integer typically can vary from  -2147483648  to  2147483647.

=> short Variables:

• short variables which hold short integers are declared using keyword short as shown

Example:

              short int b;

              short int cool;

• short needs Less space in Memory and thus helps in speed of Program Execution.

NOTE: C allows to write short int to short and of long int to long. So declaration made very easy.

Example:

               long a;

               long xyz;

               short b;

               short cool ;

NOTE: Sometimes we come across situations where the constant is small enough to be an int , but still we want to give it as much storage as a long. In such cases , we add the suffix 'L' or '1' at the end of the number i.e 23L

                                                               That's All