| C Tutorial | Type combination and promotion | |||
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Introduction to C language Integer types Char constants Int constants Type combination and promotion Int overflow Floating point types Comments Variables Assignment operator Truncation Int vs float arithmatic Mathematical operators Unary Increment Operators Pre and Post Variations C Programming Cleverness and Ego Issues Relational Operators Logical Operators Bitwise Operators Other Assignment Operators
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Type Combination and Promotion The integral types may be mixed together in arithmetic expressions since they are all basically just integers with variation in their width. For example, char and int can be combined in arithmetic expressions such as ('b' + 5). How does the compiler deal with the different widths present in such an expression? In such a case, the compiler "promotes" the smaller type (char) to be the same size as the larger type (int) before combining the values. Promotions are determined at compile time based purely on the types of the values in the expressions. Promotions do not lose information -- they always convert from a type to compatible, larger type to avoid losing information. Want more information and Video ???
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