Primitive type

In computer science, primitive types - the opposite of composite types - are datatypes with which valuess have a one-to-one correspondence to data objects stored in computer memory. They may be thought of as datatypes that are unable to be constructed from other datatypes.

Primitive types are also known as built-in types or basic types.

The actual range of primitive types that is available is dependent upon the specific programming language that is being used. For example, in C, stringss are not implemented as a primitive datatype, whereas in other languages they may be.

Typical primitive types include:

• character with a range from 1 byte to 4 bytes
• integer with a range from 2 bytes to 64 bytes
• floating-point number with binary representation
• literal string where each byte represents one character.
• reference (also called a pointer or handle)

Operations on primitive types are fastest; integer addition, for example, is nothing but addition at the machine level.

Most programming languages, even object-oriented programming languages, do not allow extending primitive types, partly because such extension makes little sense but mainly because it is hard to implement such function without sacrificing the simplicity and efficiency. Composite types may be created using primitive types and/or other composite types.