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here is my hw assignment. i have absolutely no experience with C. so any help would be appreceated
write a program to calculate the highest and lowest number that can be stored in: a char, an int (signed and unsigned), a short int, a long int. once you have done this look at the include files limits.h and float.h do the values in these files match the ones you calculated?
i really have no idea where to start because this isnt in my book, itwas just assigned to us expected that we know some C.
Read up on loops and integer overflow.
What you need to do is first find out how many bytes each of these types uses. There are 8 bits in each byte and every bit doubles the amount of combinations of those bits.
So for an unsigned char (1 byte) it would be 2^8 or (2*2*2*2*2*2*2*2)=256 (0-255). BTW a signed value uses 1 bit as the sign bit.
Have two variables of each type, one to be incremented and one to hold the previous value. Then make a loop that increments the variable by one and stores it's value in the other variable before incrementing. Then check if the values are the same (which means it has hit a maximum/minimum) and break the loop at that point.
Do another loop for signed integers which decrements instead to get the minimum value.
Hint: use the fact that many types are represented, stored and manipulated as powers of 2. Thus the limits must also be a power of 2.
Jafet is right, just keep in mind about sign & unsignedQuote:
Hint: use the fact that many types are represented, stored and manipulated as powers of 2. Thus the limits must also be a power of 2.
e.g. if int is tored in two bytes then its range is "-32768 to +32767" (signed int) i.e 2^15
if unsigned int then its "0 to 65535" i.e 2 ^ 16