programming-for-dummies

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Declaring Variables
Declaring string data types
Unlike other programming languages, C/C++ doesn’t support a string data
type. Instead, C/C++ offers two alternatives — a character data type and a
library.
First, C/C++ offers a character data type, which can hold a single character.
Instead of using a string data type, you can use an array of character data
types, which is clumsier, but workable. To declare a character data type, use
the char keyword followed by your variable name, such as
char variablename;
To mimic a string data type, declare an array of characters, such as
char arrayname[arraylength];
So if you wanted to create an array that can hold 20 characters, you could
do this:
char firstname[20];
A second alternative is to include a library (string) that implements a string
data type, such as
#include
using namespace std;
string stringvariable;
Declaring integer data types
Whole numbers represent integers, such as –59, 692, or 7. A whole number
can be positive or negative. The most common type of integer data type is
int and is used as follows:
int variablename;
If you need to restrict a variable to a smaller range of values, you can declare
a short int or a short variable as follows:
short int smallvariable;
short smallvariable;
The long integer data type is often identical to the regular int data type.