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Lecture1 ValuesTypes

Types group values and define operations that can be uniformly applied. This document discusses primitive types like integers and booleans, and composite types like structs and arrays that are composed of simpler values. It explains how arrays and functions can be understood as mappings from one set to another, and how types must have a finite cardinality.

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10 views

Lecture1 ValuesTypes

Types group values and define operations that can be uniformly applied. This document discusses primitive types like integers and booleans, and composite types like structs and arrays that are composed of simpler values. It explains how arrays and functions can be understood as mappings from one set to another, and how types must have a finite cardinality.

Uploaded by

throwaway1916email
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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FCS2: Lecture 2

Values and Types


Chapter 2: Programming Language
Design Concepts
Values and Types
• A computer program takes input, manipulates
it and produces output.
• The input is some form of data and the output
is some form of data.
• Therefore the study of data is important.
In this lecture..
• Types of values
• Primitive and composite types and their
underlying representation.
Types
• Different programming languages support
different types of values:
• Java: booleans, characters, integers, real
numbers, arrays and objects
• C: integers, real numbers, structures, arrays,
unions and pointers
• Most programming languages group values
into types
What is a type?
• A set of values
• If is a value of type then we mean that
• An expression, E, has type if the result of
evaluating E will be a value of type .
• Is every set of values suitable to be regarded
as a type?
Types
• **Each operation associated with a type
behaves uniformly when applied to all values of
the type.
• is a type because the operations and, or and
not operate uniformly over these values
• is not a type. There are no useful operations
that could be applied uniformly over this set.
• Programming languages have primitive,
composite and recursive types.
Primitive types
• A primitive type: one which cannot be decomposed
into simpler values
• Programming languages have built-in primitive types
• The type of primitive types in different programming
languages reflect the intended application area:
– Cobol (fixed-point numbers) used in commercial data
processing (e.g. banking)
– Fortran (real numbers with a choice of precision) used in
scientific and engineering applications
Primitive Types
• Common Primitive Types
– boolean
– char
– int
– float
• Java provides several integer types: byte, short, int, long
• The cardinality (#) of a Type (in Java):
– #boolean=2
– #char=216 (2 bytes)
– #float=? (4 bytes)
Composite Types
• A composite value (or data structure) is a
value that is composed from simpler values.
• A composite type is a type whose values are
composite.
• Structures, records, arrays, objects, strings,
lists, trees are composite types
Composite types
• Composite types can be understood in terms
of a small number of structuring concepts
including:
– Cartesian product
– Mapping
Cartesian Product
• Consider the pair of values
• is the set of all pairs such that comes from
the set and comes from the set

• Consider some examples of Cartesian


Product
Cartesian Product
• Month = {jan, feb, mar, apr, may, jun, jul, aug, sep, oct, nov, dec}
• Day={1, 2, 3,…,31}
• Month X Day = ?
• #(Month X Day) = ?

• In C programming:
enum Month = {jan, feb, mar, apr, may, jun, jul, aug, sep,
oct, nov, dec};
struct Date{
Month m;
byte d;
}
Mappings
• The concept of mapping underlies two
language features (arrays and
functions/methods)
• What does mean?
– is a mapping from to
– maps every value in to a value in
– What is the cardinality of ?
• Consider some examples
Mappings
• represents the set of all mappings from to
• Consider some examples.
• What is the cardinality of ?
Arrays implementing Mappings
• An array is an indexed sequence of
components
• An array has one component of type for each
value of type
• The length of an array is the number of its
components, which is # .
• The type must be finite
• Consider some examples
Functions implementing Mappings
• Consider the following function/method:
boolean isEven (int n){
return (n%2 ==0);
}
• What mapping does isEven implement? i.e.
What are the pairs of elements?
• What is the type of the mapping? i.e. The
mapping is from set ? to set ?
Functions implementing Mappings
• Consider a function/method with multiple
parameters
float power(float b, int n){
…
}
• What mapping does the method power
implement?
• What is the type of the mapping implemented
by the power function/method?
Summary
• What is a type?
• What distinguishes a type?
• What is a primitive type?
• What is a composite type?
• What are the underlying concepts for each type we
have seen?
– A primitive type
– A composite type such as a struct in C
– An array type
– A function type
Reading
• Chapter 2: Programming Language Design
Concepts

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