Primitive types

The bit is the most basic unit of information in computing and digital communication. The name is a portmanteau of binary digit. The bit represents a logical state with one of two possible values. These values are most commonly represented as , but other representations such as true/false, yes/no, on/off, and +/− are also widely used.

The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit of memory in many computer architectures. To disambiguate arbitrarily sized bytes from the common 8-bit definition, network protocol documents such as the Internet Protocol () refer to an 8-bit byte as an octet.

type which stores memory addresses in a computer program

data type representing a finite sequence of encoded characters

primitive data type

basic computing representation of truth and falsehood

datum of integral data type

base memory unit handled by a computer

value that gives indirect access to e.g. a variable or register

computer format for representing real numbers

basic data type which can be instanciated and used with the predefined operations of a programming language, or assembled as a building block together with other instances of any type to create more complex composite data types

programming language feature that allows manipulating functions like other values