Constants and integer numerals in c++

Constants

Constants are expressions with a fixed value.

Literals

Literals are used to express particular values within the source code of a program. We have already used these previously to give concrete values to variables or to express messages we wanted our programs to print out, for example, when we wrote:

a = 5;

the 5 in this piece of code was a literal constant.
Literal constants can be divided in Integer Numerals, Floating-Point Numerals, Characters, Strings and Boolean Values.

Integer Numerals

 

They are numerical constants that identify integer decimal values. Notice that to express a numerical constant we do not have to write quotes (") nor any special character. There is no doubt that it is a constant: whenever we write 1776 in a program, we will be referring to the value 1776.
In addition to decimal numbers (those that all of us are used to use every day) C++ allows the use as literal constants of octal numbers (base 8) and hexadecimal numbers (base 16). If we want to express an octal number we have to precede it with a 0 (zero character). And in order to express a hexadecimal number we have to precede it with the characters 0x (zero, x). For example, the following literal constants are all equivalent to each other:

75         // decimal 0113       // octal 0x4b       // hexadecimal

All of these represent the same number: 75 (seventy-five) expressed as a base-10 numeral, octal numeral and hexadecimal numeral, respectively.
Literal constants, like variables, are considered to have a specific data type. By default, integer literals are of type int. However, we can force them to either be unsigned by appending the u character to it, or long by appending l:

75         // int 75u        // unsigned int 75l        // long 75ul       // unsigned long

In both cases, the suffix can be specified using either upper or lowercase letters