6 Basics [basic]

6.8 Types [basic.types]

6.8.2 Fundamental types [basic.fundamental]

There are five standard signed integer types: “signed char”, “short int”, “int”, “long int”, and “long long int”.

In this list, each type provides at least as much storage as those preceding it in the list.

There may also be implementation-defined extended signed integer types.

The standard and extended signed integer types are collectively called signed integer types.

The range of representable values for a signed integer type is

- 2^{N - 1}

2^{N - 1} - 1

(inclusive), where N is called the width of the type.

[Note 1:

Plain ints are intended to have the natural width suggested by the architecture of the execution environment; the other signed integer types are provided to meet special needs.

— end note]

For each of the standard signed integer types, there exists a corresponding (but different) standard unsigned integer type: “unsigned char”, “unsigned short int”, “unsigned int”, “unsigned long int”, and “unsigned long long int”.

Likewise, for each of the extended signed integer types, there exists a corresponding extended unsigned integer type.

The standard and extended unsigned integer types are collectively called unsigned integer types.

An unsigned integer type has the same width N as the corresponding signed integer type.

The range of representable values for the unsigned type is 0 to

2^{N} - 1

(inclusive); arithmetic for the unsigned type is performed modulo

2^{N}

[Note 2:

Unsigned arithmetic does not overflow.

Overflow for signed arithmetic yields undefined behavior ([expr.pre]).

— end note]

An unsigned integer type has the same object representation, value representation, and alignment requirements ([basic.align]) as the corresponding signed integer type.

For each value x of a signed integer type, the value of the corresponding unsigned integer type congruent to x modulo

2^{N}

has the same value of corresponding bits in its value representation.30

[Example 1:

The value

- 1

of a signed integer type has the same representation as the largest value of the corresponding unsigned type.

— end example]

Table 14: Minimum width [tab:basic.fundamental.width]

🔗	Type	Minimum width N
🔗	signed char	8
🔗	short int	16
🔗	int	16
🔗	long int	32
🔗	long long int	64

The width of each standard signed integer type shall not be less than the values specified in Table 14 .

The value representation of a signed or unsigned integer type comprises N bits, where N is the respective width.

Each set of values for any padding bits ([basic.types.general]) in the object representation are alternative representations of the value specified by the value representation.

[Note 3:

Padding bits have unspecified value, but cannot cause traps.

In contrast, see ISO/IEC 9899:2018 6.2.6.2.

— end note]

[Note 4:

The signed and unsigned integer types satisfy the constraints given in ISO/IEC 9899:2018 5.2.4.2.1.

— end note]

Except as specified above, the width of a signed or unsigned integer type is implementation-defined.

Each value x of an unsigned integer type with width N has a unique representation

x = x_{0} 2^{0} + x_{1} 2^{1} + \dots + x_{N - 1} 2^{N - 1}

, where each coefficient

x_{i}

is either 0 or 1; this is called the base-2 representation of x.

The base-2 representation of a value of signed integer type is the base-2 representation of the congruent value of the corresponding unsigned integer type.

The standard signed integer types and standard unsigned integer types are collectively called the standard integer types, and the extended signed integer types and extended unsigned integer types are collectively called the extended integer types.

A fundamental type specified to have a signed or unsigned integer type as its underlying type has the same object representation, value representation, alignment requirements ([basic.align]), and range of representable values as the underlying type.

Further, each value has the same representation in both types.

Type char is a distinct type that has an implementation-defined choice of “signed char” or “unsigned char” as its underlying type.

The three types char, signed char, and unsigned char are collectively called ordinary character types.

The ordinary character types and char8_t are collectively called narrow character types.

For narrow character types, each possible bit pattern of the object representation represents a distinct value.

[Note 5:

This requirement does not hold for other types.

— end note]

[Note 6:

A bit-field of narrow character type whose width is larger than the width of that type has padding bits; see [basic.types.general].

— end note]

Type wchar_t is a distinct type that has an implementation-defined signed or unsigned integer type as its underlying type.

Type char8_t denotes a distinct type whose underlying type is unsigned char.

Types char16_t and char32_t denote distinct types whose underlying types are uint_least16_t and uint_least32_t, respectively, in <cstdint>.

Type bool is a distinct type that has the same object representation, value representation, and alignment requirements as an implementation-defined unsigned integer type.

The values of type bool are true and false.

[Note 7:

There are no signed, unsigned, short, or long bool types or values.

— end note]

The types char, wchar_t, char8_t, char16_t, and char32_t are collectively called character types.

The character types, bool, the signed and unsigned integer types, and cv-qualified versions ([basic.type.qualifier]) thereof, are collectively termed integral types.

A synonym for integral type is integer type.

[Note 8:

Enumerations ([dcl.enum]) are not integral; however, unscoped enumerations can be promoted to integral types as specified in [conv.prom].

— end note]

The three distinct types float, double, and long double can represent floating-point numbers.

The type double provides at least as much precision as float, and the type long double provides at least as much precision as double.

The set of values of the type float is a subset of the set of values of the type double; the set of values of the type double is a subset of the set of values of the type long double.

The types float, double, and long double, and cv-qualified versions ([basic.type.qualifier]) thereof, are collectively termed standard floating-point types.

An implementation may also provide additional types that represent floating-point values and define them (and cv-qualified versions thereof) to be extended floating-point types.

The standard and extended floating-point types are collectively termed floating-point types.

[Note 9:

Any additional implementation-specific types representing floating-point values that are not defined by the implementation to be extended floating-point types are not considered to be floating-point types, and this document imposes no requirements on them or their interactions with floating-point types.

— end note]

Except as specified in [basic.extended.fp], the object and value representations and accuracy of operations of floating-point types are implementation-defined.

The minimum range of representable values for a floating-point type is the most negative finite floating-point number representable in that type through the most positive finite floating-point number representable in that type.

In addition, if negative infinity is representable in a type, the range of that type is extended to all negative real numbers; likewise, if positive infinity is representable in a type, the range of that type is extended to all positive real numbers.

[Note 10:

Since negative and positive infinity are representable in ISO/IEC 60559 formats, all real numbers lie within the range of representable values of a floating-point type adhering to ISO/IEC 60559.

— end note]

Integral and floating-point types are collectively termed arithmetic types.

[Note 11:

Properties of the arithmetic types, such as their minimum and maximum representable value, can be queried using the facilities in the standard library headers <limits>, <climits>, and <cfloat>.

— end note]

A type cv void is an incomplete type that cannot be completed; such a type has an empty set of values.

It is used as the return type for functions that do not return a value.

An expression of type cv void shall be used only as

(15.1)
an expression statement ([stmt.expr]),
(15.2)
the expression in a return statement ([stmt.return]) for a function with the return type cv void,
(15.3)
an operand of a comma expression ([expr.comma]),
(15.4)
the second or third operand of ?: ([expr.cond]),
(15.5)
the operand of a typeid expression ([expr.typeid]),
(15.6)
the operand of a noexcept operator ([expr.unary.noexcept]),
(15.7)
the operand of a decltype specifier ([dcl.type.decltype]), or
(15.8)
the operand of an explicit conversion to type cv void ([expr.type.conv], [expr.static.cast], [expr.cast]).

The types denoted by cv std::nullptr_t are distinct types.

A prvalue of type std::nullptr_t is a null pointer constant ([conv.ptr]).

Such values participate in the pointer and the pointer-to-member conversions ([conv.ptr], [conv.mem]).

sizeof(std::nullptr_t) shall be equal to sizeof(void*).

The types described in this subclause are called fundamental types.

[Note 12:

Even if the implementation defines two or more fundamental types to have the same value representation, they are nevertheless different types.

— end note]

30)30)

This is also known as two's complement representation.