In computer science, primitive data type is either of the following:
- a basic type is a data type provided by a programming language as a basic building block. Most languages allow more complicated composite types to be recursively constructed starting from basic types.
- a built-in type is a data type for which the programming language provides built-in support.
In most programming languages, all basic data types are built-in. In addition, many languages also provide a set of composite data types. Opinions vary as to whether a built-in type that is not basic should be considered "primitive".
Depending on the language and its implementation, primitive data types may or may not have a one-to-one correspondence with objects in the computer's memory. However, one usually expects operations on basic primitive data types to be the fastest language constructs there are. Integer addition, for example, can be performed as a single machine instruction, and some processors offer specific instructions to process sequences of characters with a single instruction. In particular, the C standard mentions that "a 'plain' int object has the natural size suggested by the architecture of the execution environment". This means that int is likely to be 32 bits long on a 32-bit architecture. Basic primitive types are almost always value types.
Most languages do not allow the behavior or capabilities of primitive (either built-in or basic) data types to be modified by programs. Exceptions include Smalltalk, which permits all data types to be extended within a program, adding to the operations that can be performed on them or even redefining the built-in operations.
Read more about Primitive Data Type: Overview
Famous quotes containing the words primitive, data and/or type:
“The primitive wood is always and everywhere damp and mossy, so that I traveled constantly with the impression that I was in a swamp; and only when it was remarked that this or that tract, judging from the quality of the timber on it, would make a profitable clearing, was I reminded, that if the sun were let in it would make a dry field, like the few I had seen, at once.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“To write it, it took three months; to conceive it three minutes; to collect the data in it—all my life.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“How is freedom measured, in individuals as in nations? By the resistance which has to be overcome, by the effort it costs to stay aloft. One would have to seek the highest type of free man where the greatest resistance is constantly being overcome: five steps from tyranny, near the threshold of the danger of servitude.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)