A word

• Which is a group of 16 contiguous bits or 2 bytes, is used to represent a natural number
• As we have studied, the maximum numeric value that can fit in a word is 65535
• Since the Byte is used only to represent a character, whenever you plan to use a number in your program, the minimum representation you should/must use is a word

An algebraic natural number

• Is also called an integer

The smallest integer you can store in a word

• Is declared with the short keyword followed by a name

A short integer is signed by default

• It can store a value that ranges from –32768 to 32767
• Here is an example program that uses two short integers (A-1):

Example of (A-1)

#include <iostream>
 
using namespace std;
 
int main()
{
 
	short number1, number2;
 
 
	cout << "Enter a number between -32768 and 32767: ";
 
	cin >> number1;
 
	cout << "Enter another number: ";
 
	cin >> number2;
 
 
 
	cout << "\nThe numbers you entered were\n";
 
	cout << "\tNumber 1: " << number1 << "\n";
 
	cout << "\tNumber 2: " << number2 << "\n";
 
 
 
	return 0;
 
}

 
By default, a short integer

• Is signed
• You can also explicitly declare such a variable as a signed short
• Here is an example (A-2):

 
Example of (A-2)

signed short XCoord;

If the integer must be positive

• You should declared as an unsigned short

The unsigned short is used

• To identify a 16-bit positive integer whose value would range from 0 to 65535