Numbers & Math

Enemy 1 of 5

The basic operators

C++'s int type stores whole numbers (no decimal point). The four basic arithmetic operators work exactly like you'd expect from math class: + for addition, - for subtraction, * for multiplication, and / for division.

One gotcha that trips up almost everyone at first: dividing two ints in C++ gives you integer division, meaning the decimal part is thrown away. 7 / 2 evaluates to 3, not 3.5. If you want a precise decimal answer, at least one of the values needs to be a floating-point type like double.

You can combine variables and literal numbers freely in the same expression, and C++ follows the usual order of operations (multiplication and division before addition and subtraction), just like in algebra.