Types of C Variables

As we saw earlier, an entity that may vary during program execution is called a variable. Variable names are names given to locations in memory. These locations can contain integer, real or character constants. In any language, the types of variables that it can support depend on the types of constants that it can handle. This is because a particular type of variable can hold only the same type of constant. For example, an integer variable can hold only an integer constant, a real variable can hold only a real constant and a character variable can hold only a character constant.

The rules for constructing different types of constants are different. However, for constructing variable names of all types the same set of rules apply. These rules are given below.