Types of Values
Elements of Programming defines a value to be a sequence of bits, called datum, together with its interpretation. A value type, then, is a correspondence between a set of data and a set of abstract or concrete entities sharing characteristic attributes. The set of entities is sometimes called a species. For example, a value type—call it small_int_value— can establish the correspondence between a sequence of 16 bits and integers values from -32,768 to +32,767 through a two's complement representation.
Value types do not include constraints on how their values are stored. E.g., the type small_int_value in the example above does not determine byte order, alignment, or even the number of 8-bit bytes used to store the 16 bits of the value type's representation. Since the values underpinning value types are not stored, value types also do not include a notion of mutation. A type that does determine constraints for storage in random-access memory is often called an object type.
Read more about this topic: Value Type
Famous quotes containing the words types of, types and/or values:
“... there are two types of happiness and I have chosen that of the murderers. For I am happy. There was a time when I thought I had reached the limit of distress. Beyond that limit, there is a sterile and magnificent happiness.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“He’s one of those know-it-all types that, if you flatter the wig off him, he chatter like a goony bird at mating time.”
—Michael Blankfort. Lewis Milestone. Johnson (Reginald Gardner)
“Tallulah [Bankhead] was the foremost naughty girl of her era but, in those days, “naughty” meant piquant, whereas values have so changed that now, in the 1970s, it generally means nauseating.”
—Anita Loos (1888–1981)