datumtyper

Datumtyper, or data types, are abstractions that describe what kinds of values a program can manipulate and what operations are meaningful for those values. They determine how much memory a value occupies, how it is represented, and which operations are valid, enabling static or dynamic checks for type errors at compile time or run time.

Datumtyper are typically categorized as primitive (such as integers, floating-point numbers, booleans, and characters) and composite (such as strings, arrays, lists, tuples, records/structs, maps, and sets). Many languages also support function types and user-defined types like enums and classes. The same concept can be extended to more specialized domains, such as date types or pointer/reference types, depending on the language.

Type systems define how datumtyper are enforced and composed. Typing can be static or dynamic, strong or weak, nominal or structural, and explicit or inferred. Static typing performs checks at compile time, while dynamic typing defers checks to run time. Type inference allows compilers to deduce types without explicit annotations in some languages.

Conversions between types may be done implicitly (coercion) or explicitly (casting). Proper handling of datumtyper influences safety, performance, and interoperability, and affects memory layout and garbage collection needs in a runtime system.

Examples: C uses int, double, char; Java uses int, boolean, double, String; Python uses int, float, bool, str, list; Haskell uses algebraic types and type classes.