Type conversion and typecasting

TYPE CONVERSION AND TYPECASTING

Type conversion or typecasting of variables refers to converting a variable of one data type into another. While type conversion is done implicitly, casting has to be finish explicitly by the programmer.

We will discuss both these concepts here.

Type Conversion

Type conversion is finish when the expression has variables of different data types. So to calculate the expression, the data type is upgrade from lower to higher level where the hierarchy of data types can be given as: double, float, long, int, short, and char. For example, type conversion

is automatically done when we assign an integer value to a floating point variable. Consider the following code:

float x;

int y = 3;

x = y;

Now, x = 3.0, as integer value is automatically converted into its same floating point representation.

Typecasting

Typecasting is also known as forced conversion. It is complete when the value of one data type has to be converted into the value of another data type. The code to perform typecasting can be given as:

float salary = 10000.00;

int sal;

sal = (int) salary;

When floating point numbers are converted to integers, the digits after the decimal are truncated. Therefore, data is lost when floating point representations are converted to integral representations.

As we can see in the code, typecasting can be done by placing the destination data type in parentheses followed by the variable name that has to be converted. Hence, we conclude that typecasting is done to make a variable of one data type to act like a variable of another type.

Programming Example

Write a program to convert an integer into the corresponding floating point number.

#include <stdio.h>

#include <conio.h>

int main()

{

float f_num;

int i_num;

clrscr();

printf("\n Enter any integer: ");

scanf("%d", &i_num);

f_num = (float)i_num;