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C Storage Classes Are Used To Describe The Features of A Variable

C language has four storage classes: auto, extern, static, and register, which define the scope, visibility, and lifetime of variables. Auto variables are local to a block, extern variables are accessible globally, static variables retain their value beyond their scope, and register variables are optimized for speed by being stored in CPU registers. The syntax for declaring a storage class is 'storage_class var_data_type var_name;'.

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11 views3 pages

C Storage Classes Are Used To Describe The Features of A Variable

C language has four storage classes: auto, extern, static, and register, which define the scope, visibility, and lifetime of variables. Auto variables are local to a block, extern variables are accessible globally, static variables retain their value beyond their scope, and register variables are optimized for speed by being stored in CPU registers. The syntax for declaring a storage class is 'storage_class var_data_type var_name;'.

Uploaded by

Shruti Tripathi
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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C Storage Classes are used to describe the features of a

variable/function. These features basically include the scope,


visibility, and lifetime which help us to trace the existence of
a particular variable during the runtime of a program.
C language uses 4 storage classes, namely:

Storage classes in C define the scope and lifetime of variables.


1. auto
This is the default storage class for all the variables declared
inside a function or a block. Hence, the keyword auto is rarely
used while writing programs in C language. Auto variables
can be only accessed within the block they have been
declared and not outside them (which defines their scope).
Auto variables are also assigned a garbage value by default
when they are declared.
Likewise, auto keyword is not used in front of functions as
functions are not limited to block scope.
2. extern
Extern storage class simply tells us that the variable is defined
elsewhere and not within the same block where it is used.
Basically, the value is assigned to it in a different block and
this can be overwritten/changed in a different block as well.
So an extern variable is nothing but a global variable
initialized with a legal value where it is declared in order to be
used elsewhere. It can be accessed within any function/block.
Also, a normal global variable can be made extern as well by
placing the ‘extern’ keyword before its declaration/definition
in any function/block. This basically signifies that we are not
initializing a new variable but instead, we are using/accessing
the global variable only. The main purpose of using extern
variables is that they can be accessed between two different
files which are part of a large program.
3. static
This storage class is used to declare static variables which are
popularly used while writing programs in C language. Static
variables have the property of preserving their value even
after they are out of their scope! Hence, static variables
preserve the value of their last use in their scope. So we can
say that they are initialized only once and exist till the
termination of the program. Thus, no new memory is
allocated because they are not re-declared.
Their scope is local to the function to which they were
defined. Global static variables can be accessed anywhere in
the program. By default, they are assigned the value 0 by the
compiler.
4. register
This storage class declares register variables that have the
same functionality as that of the auto variables. The only
difference is that the compiler tries to store these variables in
the register of the microprocessor if a free register is
available. This makes the use of register variables to be much
faster than that of the variables stored in the memory during
the runtime of the program.
If a free registration is not available, these are then stored in
the memory only. Usually, a few variables which are to be
accessed very frequently in a program are declared with the
register keyword which improves the running time of the
program. An important and interesting point to be noted here
is that we cannot obtain the address of a register variable
using pointers.
Syntax
To specify the storage class for a variable, the following syntax
is to be followed:
storage_class var_data_type var_name;

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