What are range of character data type in c plus plus?

Answer 1

The range of character data types in C++ is the set of characters in the host's character set.

It is inappropriate to consider the numerical range of such things as characters, because that depends on the particular codeset involved, such as ASCII, EBCDIC, UNICODE, KANJI, etc. Doing that leads to non-portable code, and lazy programming practices. Do not write code that depends on the collating sequence of the character set, or the numerical difference between two characters.

Type char can be signed or unsigned, the value range is -128..127 or 0..255 respectively.

Answer 2

The range of all the built-in data types in C is implementation-defined. Each implementation provides its own version of the standard library header which specifies the range of all the built-in integral types for that particular implementation. The range of all the built-in precision types (float, double and long double) are similarly defined in the header.

Each value is defined as a macro symbol. To ensure portability across all implementations, it is recommended you use these macros at all times.

CHAR_BIT: specifies the number of bits in all 3 of the integral char data types (plain char, signed char and unsigned char). This value is always at least 8. The length of all other data types are expressed in terms of a char (rather than in terms of bits), where sizeof (char) is always 1. Thus to determine the number of bits in a type T, use the expression sizeof (T) * CHAR_BIT.

SCHAR_MIN: defines the lower range of a signed char. If CHAR_BIT is defined as being 8, then SCHAR_MIN is defined as being -127 on a ones-complement implementation and -128 on a twos-complement implementation. The notation itself is system-defined (and thus implementation defined). Twos-complement is the conventional notation in use today.

SCHAR_MAX: defines the upper range of a signed char. If CHAR_BIT is 8, then SCHAR_MAX is defined as being 127.

UCHAR_MAX: defines the upper range of an unsigned char. If CHAR_BIT is 8, then UCHAR_MAX is defined as being 255.

Note: there is no UCHAR_MIN macro because all unsigned integral types have a lower range of 0.

CHAR_MIN: defines the lower range of a plain char. On implementations where a plain char is signed, CHAR_MIN is defined as being the same as SCHAR_MIN, otherwise it is 0.

CHAR_MAX: defines the upper range of a plain char. On implementations where a plain char is signed, CHAR_MAX is defined as being the same as SCHAR_MAX, otherwise it is defined as being the same as UCHAR_MAX.

There are similar macros dealing with the lower and upper ranges of all other built-in integrals, such as ULONG_MAX for the upper range of an unsigned long int.