Reference no: EM13333884

Some programming languages are intended to create a very abstract programming environment that completely obscures the underlying computer hardware (e.g., Java, Lisp, Prolog, SNOBOL, etc.). Not so C++. In C++, there is a close relationship between every data type and the underlying memory structure. Data must ultimately be mapped in a predictable way to a fixed number of linearly numbered memory bytes.

The sizeof() function will report the size (in bytes) of built-in or built-up (aggregate) types based on their type name, or it will compute and report the size of declared data items (e.g., variables). Find the Visual Studio documentation for sizeof() and review its syntax and usage.

Exercise 1:
Use the sizeof() function to compute and output the size of each of the following fundamental types: char, bool, short, int, long, unsigned int, unsigned long, float, double. The fact that data types map to a fixed number of bytes implies that every data type is limited in its range and/or precision. These limits are known a priori for any given compiler implementation, and their values are stored in the implementation-specific header files "LIMITS.H" and "FLOAT.H".

Exercise 2:
Find these header files in the Visual Studio system and determine the smallest (i.e., most negative) and largest (i.e., most positive) values that can be represented as int, unsigned int, long, unsigned long, float and double.