Grunntypen

Grunntypen, or basic types, are the fundamental data types defined by a programming language or computing system. They describe the simplest values that can be stored, manipulated, and used to construct more complex data structures. Grunntypen form the core of a language’s type system and determine how much memory a value occupies, which operations are valid, and how values can be compared or converted.

Common grunntypen include numeric types (integers and floating-point numbers), boolean values, and characters. In many languages strings are also treated as a base type, while in others they are built from arrays or sequences of characters. The exact set and semantics of grunntypen vary by language and can include signed or unsigned variants, different bit widths, and special values such as null or NaN.

Grunntypen interact with the language’s type system, which may be static or dynamic, strong or weak, and may support explicit or implicit type coercion. They are used to define addresses, perform arithmetic, and implement control flow, and they often serve as the primary building blocks for more complex types such as arrays, records, and objects.

Examples illustrate the variation across languages: C provides int, long, short, char, float, double, and _Bool; Java includes int, long, short, byte, float, double, boolean, and char; Python uses int, float, bool, and str in a dynamically typed environment. While the specific bases differ, grunntypen remain a central concept in language design, facilitating memory layout, type checking, and predictable behavior.