Numeric data types are types of data that consist of numbers, which can be computed mathematically with various standard operators such as add, minus, multiply, divide and so on.
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
Examples of numeric data types are your examination marks, your height, your weight, the number of students in a class, share values, price of goods, monthly bills, fees and etc. In Visual Basic, numeric data are divided into 7 types, depending on the range of values they can store. Calculations that only involve round figures or data that don't need precision can use Integer or Long integer in the computation. Programs that require high precision calculation need to use Single and Double decision data types, they are also called floating point numbers. For currency calculation , you can use the currency data types. Lastly, if even more precision is requires to perform calculations that involve a many decimal points, we can use the decimal data types.
Type
Storage
Range of Values
1 byte
0 to 255
Integer
2 bytes
-32,768 to 32,767
Long
4 bytes
-2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,648
Single
4 bytes
-3.402823E+38 to -1.401298E-45 for negative values
1.401298E-45 to 3.402823E+38 for positive values.
Double
8 bytes
-1.79769313486232e+308 to -4.94065645841247E-324
for negative values
4.94065645841247E-324 to 1.79769313486232e+308 for positive values.
Currency
8 bytes
-922,337,203,685,477.5808 to
922,337,203,685,477.5807
Decimal
12 bytes
+/- 79,228,162,514,264,337,593,543,950,335 if no
decimal is use
+/- 7.9228162514264337593543950335 (28 decimal places).
2.Non-numeric Data Types
Nonnumeric data types are data that cannot be manipulated mathematically using standard arithmetic operators. The non-numeric data comprises text or string data types, the Date data types, the Boolean data types that store only two values (true or false), Object data type and Variant data type .They are summarized in Table 5.2
Data Type
Storage
Range
String(fixed length)
Length of string
1 to 65,400 characters
String(variable length)
Length + 10 bytes
0 to 2 billion characters
Date
8 bytes
January 1, 100 to December 31, 9999
Boolean
2 bytes
True or False
Object
4 bytes
Any embedded object
Variant(numeric)
16 bytes
Any value as large as Double
Variant(text)
Length+22 bytes
Same as variable-length string
Declaring Variables
In Visual Basic, one needs to declare the variables before using them by assigning names and data types and they are normally declared in the general section of the codes' windows using the Dim statement.
The format is as follows:
Dim variableNmae as DataType
Example:
Dim password As String
Dim yourName As String
Dim firstnum As Integer
Dim secondnum As Integer
Dim total As Integer
Dim doDate As Date
