Chapter 2. Data types, variables, and constants

Virtually every application needs to store, represent, or process data of some kind, whether a list of calendar appointments, the current weather conditions in New York, or the high scores of a game.

Because Objective-C is a statically typed language, whenever you declare a variable, you must also specify the type of data you expect to store in it. As an example, the following variable declaration declares a variable named zombieCount, which is of type int:

Short for integer, int is a data type capable of storing a whole number between −2,147,483,648 and +2,147,483,647. In this chapter, you’ll discover many data types that can be used to store a wide range of real-world values. But before we dive in too far, let’s introduce the Rental Manager application that we build over the course of this book.

2.1. Introducing the Rental Manager application

2.2. The basic data types

2.3. Displaying and converting values

2.4. Creating your own data types

2.5. Completing Rental Manager v1.0, App Store here we come!

2.6. Summary