Purpose of type Declarations and Components of type Declarations

Type Declarations :

The type declaration statement is used to specify the type and attributes of derived type objects such as arrays, pointer and functions.

Purpose of type declarations :

• Type declarations assist the compiler in identifying the object to which the name refers to.
• In case, if no data types exist, there would be no type checking, which produces adverse effects on debugging and error checking. It also affects the program's reliability.
• Absence of data types also affects the language's readability as the objects with distinctive characteristics are difficult to isolate.

Components of type declarations :

A type declarative statement involves the following components.

• type - name : it refers to the name of already defined derived datatype.
• attribute - list : it consists of one or more attributes separated by a comma.

 Syntax : type-name attribute -list 

 Example : int a,b,c;
 

A type declaration statement must end with a semicolon(;), values can also be assigned to attributes as follows.

 int a = 10, b = 5, c = 3;

The above type-declarative statement assigns the values 10, 5 and 3 to the int type variables a, b and c respectively.