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In computing, language primitives are the simplest elements available in a programming language. A primitive is the smallest 'unit of processing' available to a programmer of a given machine, or can be an atomic element of an expression in a language. Primitives are units with a meaning, i.e., a semantic value in the language.
More generally, primitive data types may refer to the standard data types built into a programming language (built-in types). [3] [4] Data types which are not primitive are referred to as derived or composite. [3] Primitive types are almost always value types, but composite types may also be value types. [5]
User-defined data types are non-primitive types. For example, Java's numeric types are primitive, while classes are user-defined. A value of an atomic type is a single data item that cannot be broken into component parts. A value of a composite type or aggregate type is a collection of data items that can be accessed individually. [6]
Some programming languages allow compilers to provide coercion; others require it. In a mixed-type expression, data of one or more subtypes can be converted to a supertype as needed at runtime so that the program will run correctly. For example, the following is legal C language code:
The text processing of a regular expression is a virtual editing machine, having a primitive programming language that has named registers (identifiers), and named positions in the sequence of characters comprising the text. Using these, the "text processor" can, for example, mark a region of text, and then move it.
This is an accepted version of this page This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 5 January 2025. Language for communicating instructions to a machine The source code for a computer program in C. The gray lines are comments that explain the program to humans. When compiled and run, it will give the output "Hello, world!". A programming language is a system of notation for writing ...
In computer science, boxing (a.k.a. wrapping) is the transformation of placing a primitive type within an object so that the value can be used as a reference. Unboxing is the reverse transformation of extracting the primitive value from its wrapper object. Autoboxing is the term for automatically applying boxing and/or unboxing transformations ...
The only exception is the primitive data types, which are not considered to be objects for performance reasons (though can be automatically converted to objects and vice versa via autoboxing). Some features like operator overloading or unsigned integer data types are omitted to simplify the language and avoid possible programming mistakes.