Objects declared as characters (char) shall be large enough to store any member of the implementation's basic character set. If a character from this set is stored in a character object, the integral value of that character object is equal to the value of the single character literal form of that character. It is implementation-defined whether a char object can hold negative values. Characters can be explicitly declared unsigned or signed. Plain char, signed char, and unsigned char are three distinct types, collectively called narrow character types. A char, a signed char, and an unsigned char occupy the same amount of storage and have the same alignment requirements ([basic.align]); that is, they have the same object representation. For narrow character types, all bits of the object representation participate in the value representation. For unsigned narrow character types, all possible bit patterns of the value representation represent numbers. These requirements do not hold for other types. In any particular implementation, a plain char object can take on either the same values as a signed char or an unsigned char; which one is implementation-defined. For each value i of type unsigned char in the range 0 to 255 inclusive, there exists a value j of type char such that the result of an integral conversion ([conv.integral]) from i to char is j, and the result of an integral conversion from j to unsigned char is i.
There are five standard signed integer types : “signed char”, “short int”, “int”, “long int”, and “long long int”. In this list, each type provides at least as much storage as those preceding it in the list. There may also be implementation-defined extended signed integer types. The standard and extended signed integer types are collectively called signed integer types. Plain ints have the natural size suggested by the architecture of the execution environment46; the other signed integer types are provided to meet special needs.
For each of the standard signed integer types, there exists a corresponding (but different) standard unsigned integer type: “unsigned char”, “unsigned short int”, “unsigned int”, “unsigned long int”, and “unsigned long long int”, each of which occupies the same amount of storage and has the same alignment requirements ([basic.align]) as the corresponding signed integer type47; that is, each signed integer type has the same object representation as its corresponding unsigned integer type. Likewise, for each of the extended signed integer types there exists a corresponding extended unsigned integer type with the same amount of storage and alignment requirements. The standard and extended unsigned integer types are collectively called unsigned integer types. The range of non-negative values of a signed integer type is a subrange of the corresponding unsigned integer type, and the value representation of each corresponding signed/unsigned type shall be the same. The standard signed integer types and standard unsigned integer types are collectively called the standard integer types, and the extended signed integer types and extended unsigned integer types are collectively called the extended integer types. The signed and unsigned integer types shall satisfy the constraints given in the C standard, section 5.2.4.2.1.
Unsigned integers shall obey the laws of arithmetic modulo 2n where n is the number of bits in the value representation of that particular size of integer.48
Type wchar_t is a distinct type whose values can represent distinct codes for all members of the largest extended character set specified among the supported locales ([locale]). Type wchar_t shall have the same size, signedness, and alignment requirements ([basic.align]) as one of the other integral types, called its underlying type. Types char16_t and char32_t denote distinct types with the same size, signedness, and alignment as uint_least16_t and uint_least32_t, respectively, in <cstdint>, called the underlying types.
Values of type bool are either true or false.49 [ Note: There are no signed, unsigned, short, or long bool types or values. — end note ] Values of type bool participate in integral promotions ([conv.prom]).
Types bool, char, char16_t, char32_t, wchar_t, and the signed and unsigned integer types are collectively called integral types.50 A synonym for integral type is integer type. The representations of integral types shall define values by use of a pure binary numeration system.51 [ Example: this International Standard permits 2's complement, 1's complement and signed magnitude representations for integral types. — end example ]
There are three floating point types: float, double, and long double. The type double provides at least as much precision as float, and the type long double provides at least as much precision as double. The set of values of the type float is a subset of the set of values of the type double; the set of values of the type double is a subset of the set of values of the type long double. The value representation of floating-point types is implementation-defined. Integral and floating types are collectively called arithmetic types. Specializations of the standard template std::numeric_limits ([support.limits]) shall specify the maximum and minimum values of each arithmetic type for an implementation.
The void type has an empty set of values. The void type is an incomplete type that cannot be completed. It is used as the return type for functions that do not return a value. Any expression can be explicitly converted to type cv void ([expr.cast]). An expression of type void shall be used only as an expression statement ([stmt.expr]), as an operand of a comma expression ([expr.comma]), as a second or third operand of ?: ([expr.cond]), as the operand of typeid, noexcept, or decltype, as the expression in a return statement ([stmt.return]) for a function with the return type void, or as the operand of an explicit conversion to type cv void.
A value of type std::nullptr_t is a null pointer constant ([conv.ptr]). Such values participate in the pointer and the pointer to member conversions ([conv.ptr], [conv.mem]). sizeof(std::nullptr_t) shall be equal to sizeof(void*).
[ Note: Even if the implementation defines two or more basic types to have the same value representation, they are nevertheless different types. — end note ]
that is, large enough to contain any value in the range of INT_MIN and INT_MAX, as defined in the header <climits>.
See [dcl.type.simple] regarding the correspondence between types and the sequences of type-specifiers that designate them.
This implies that unsigned arithmetic does not overflow because a result that cannot be represented by the resulting unsigned integer type is reduced modulo the number that is one greater than the largest value that can be represented by the resulting unsigned integer type.
Using a bool value in ways described by this International Standard as “undefined,” such as by examining the value of an uninitialized automatic object, might cause it to behave as if it is neither true nor false.
Therefore, enumerations ([dcl.enum]) are not integral; however, enumerations can be promoted to integral types as specified in [conv.prom].
A positional representation for integers that uses the binary digits 0 and 1, in which the values represented by successive bits are additive, begin with 1, and are multiplied by successive integral power of 2, except perhaps for the bit with the highest position. (Adapted from the American National Dictionary for Information Processing Systems.)