data_types.md

# DATA TYPES

One of the quintessential aspect of a Programming Language are its Data Types that it provides.
These are important to learn, especially in C++ because, while they might look the same, they all serve widely different purposes.

Let's begin by looking at the following screenshot:

![image](https://github.coventry.ac.uk/storage/user/5757/files/70062a91-fe34-42d7-af67-9fb00c773fd7)


Through this, I have defined two structs that will act as the basis of the type of data type you can
include; fixed data types and non-fixed. 

Fixed data types are those of which that have a signed integer type associated iwth them with the
width that corresponds with the bit count ranging from 8 to 64. Typically speaking, these data types are much faster compared to the non-fixed counterparts due to the lack of lease in their data range

For example, data types that start with ``u`` typically have a range of 0 to 255.
The ``u`` is a declarative that tells the compiler that in the bit count range, the constant ``1`` is used as the unsigned integer type.

Whereas, ``int_t`` is a surrogate of ``uint_t`` because it's data range is much more vast at the expense of a longer compilation time, (the range being -128, 127)

Another viable method of declaring data types and variables is through macros.
C Macros are powerful because you are able to declare them like you would with any other 
variable except with the added benefit of one-liners in order to make your code cleaner.

![image](https://github.coventry.ac.uk/storage/user/5757/files/265d67f1-51ed-4f8c-bf0b-db311245ee31)

![image](https://github.coventry.ac.uk/storage/user/5757/files/76564f11-c0a1-4e0a-b22b-52b3017812c3)

# END RESULT:

``Hello Harry``

# NOTE:

It should be noted that while you can make the declrative of a macro anything such as an ``int, char, string, bool, double, float, const, etc``
You CANNOT define a macro as a ``struct`` otherwise it will not work

By all means, you can do what I did in the first screenshot and define a macro with the same name as the struct but it needs to explictially state 
that it is a struct otherwise it will not work for some reason?!