Integer (computer science) in the context of "16 bit"

In computer science, a literal is a textual representation (notation) of a value as it is written in source code. Almost all programming languages have notations for atomic values such as integers, floating-point numbers, and strings, and usually for Booleans and characters; some also have notations for elements of enumerated types and compound values such as arrays, records, and objects. An anonymous function is a literal for the function type.

In contrast to literals, variables or constants are symbols that can take on one of a class of fixed values, the constant being constrained not to change. Literals are often used to initialize variables; for example, in the following, 1 is an integer literal and the three letter string in "cat" is a string literal:

In high-level programming, a variable is an abstract storage or indirection location paired with an associated symbolic name, which contains some known or unknown quantity of data or object referred to as a value; or in simpler terms, a variable is a named container for a particular set of bits or type of data (like integer, float, string, etc...) or undefined. A variable can eventually be associated with or identified by a memory address. The variable name is the usual way to reference the stored value, in addition to referring to the variable itself, depending on the context. This separation of name and content allows the name to be used independently of the exact information it represents. The identifier in computer source code can be bound to a value during run time, and the value of the variable may thus change during the course of program execution.

Variables in programming may not directly correspond to the concept of variables in mathematics. The latter is abstract, having no reference to a physical object such as storage location. The value of a computing variable is not necessarily part of an equation or formula as in mathematics. Furthermore, the variables can also be constants if the value is defined statically. Variables in computer programming are frequently given long names to make them relatively descriptive of their use, whereas variables in mathematics often have terse, one- or two-character names for brevity in transcription and manipulation.

In computer architecture, 8-bit integers or other data units are those that are 8 bits wide (1 octet). Also, 8-bit central processing unit (CPU) and arithmetic logic unit (ALU) architectures are those that are based on registers or data buses of that size. Memory addresses (and thus address buses) for 8-bit CPUs are generally larger than 8-bit, usually 16-bit. 8-bit microcomputers are microcomputers that use 8-bit microprocessors.

The term '8-bit' is also applied to the character sets that could be used on computers with 8-bit bytes, the best known being various forms of extended ASCII, including the ISO/IEC 8859 series of national character sets – especially Latin 1 for English and Western European languages.

In computer science and computer programming, a data type (or simply type) is a collection or grouping of data values, usually specified by a set of possible values, a set of allowed operations on these values, and/or a representation of these values as machine types. A data type specification in a program constrains the possible values that an expression, such as a variable or a function call, might take. On literal data, it tells the compiler or interpreter how the programmer intends to use the data. Most programming languages support basic data types of integer numbers (of varying sizes), floating-point numbers (which approximate real numbers), characters and Booleans.

In computer programming, a collection is an abstract data type that is a grouping of items that can be used in a polymorphic way.

Often, the items are of the same data type such as int or string. Sometimes the items derive from a common type; even deriving from the most general type of a programming language such as object or variant.

In computer science, an expression is a syntactic notation in a programming language that may be evaluated to determine its value of a specific semantic type. It is a combination of one or more numbers, constants, variables, functions, and operators that the programming language interprets (according to its particular rules of precedence and of association) and computes to produce ("to return", in a stateful environment) another value.In simple settings, the resulting value is usually one of various primitive types, such as string, boolean, or numerical (such as integer, floating-point, or complex).

Expressions are often contrasted with statements—syntactic entities that have no value (an instruction).