Description

Type Casting - C Programming

What is type casting?

*Type casting refers to changing an variable of one data type into another. The compiler will automatically change one type of data into another if it makes sense. For instance, if you assign an integer value to a floating-point variable, the compiler will convert the int to a float. Casting allows us to make this type conversion explicit, or to force it when it wouldn’t normally happen.

*Type conversion in c can be classified into the following two types:

Implicit Type Conversion

Also known as ‘automatic type conversion.’
Done by the compiler on its own, without any external trigger from the user.
Generally takes place when in an expression more than one data type is present. In such condition type conversion (type promotion) takes place to avoid lose of data.

An example of implicit conversion

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

int main()
{
    int x = 10; // integer x
    char y = 'a'; // character c

    // y implicitly converted to int. ASCII
    // value of 'a' is 97
    x = x + y;

    // x is implicitly converted to float
    float z = x + 1.0;

    cout << "x = " << x << endl
         << "y = " << y << endl
         << "z = " << z << endl;

    return 0;
}

Output

x = 107
y = a
z = 108

Explict Type Conversion

The type conversion performed by the programmer by posing the data type of the expression of specific type is known as explicit type conversion.
The explicit type conversion is also known as type casting.

An example of explicit conversion

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

int main()
{
    double x = 1.2;

    // Explicit conversion from double to int
    int sum = (int)x + 1;

    cout << "Sum = " << sum;

    return 0;
}

Output

Sum = 2

Advantages of Type Conversion:

This is done to take advantage of certain features of type hierarchies or type representations.
It helps to compute expressions containing variables of different data types.

Domain

C/CPP

Type of Contribution

Documentation

Code of Conduct

[X] I follow Contributing Guidelines & Code of conduct of this project.

girlscript / winter-of-contributing

C_CPP Type Casting #8189

Description

Type Casting - C Programming

What is type casting?

Implicit Type Conversion

An example of implicit conversion

Output

Explict Type Conversion

An example of explicit conversion

Output

Advantages of Type Conversion:

Domain

Type of Contribution

Code of Conduct