Introduction

In the previous part, we learned about some basic data types in Elixir, such as atoms and booleans. In this part, we will explore some more data types that are commonly used in Elixir programs: integers, floats, and strings.

Integers/Floats

Integers and floats are numeric data types that represent whole numbers and decimal numbers respectively. They can be used for arithmetic operations, such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. For example:

# Integers
iex> 1 + 2
3
iex> 10 - 5
5
iex> 3 * 4
12
iex> 20 / 4
5.0

# Floats
iex> 1.5 + 2.5
4.0
iex> 3.14 - 1.0
2.14
iex> 2.0 * 1.5
3.0
iex> 10.0 / 3.0
3.3333333333333335

Notice that dividing two integers always returns a float, even if the result is a whole number. This is because Elixir uses floating-point arithmetic to perform division, which can introduce some rounding errors. If you want to get an integer result from division, you can use the div/2 function instead:

iex> div(20, 4)
5
iex> div(10, 3)
3

You can also use the rem/2 function to get the remainder of a division:

iex> rem(10, 3)
1
iex> rem(20, 4)
0

Integers and floats can also be written in different formats, such as binary, octal, hexadecimal, scientific notation, and underscore separators. For example:

# Binary
iex> 0b1010 # equivalent to 10 in decimal
10

# Octal
iex> 0o12 # equivalent to 10 in decimal
10

# Hexadecimal
iex> 0xA # equivalent to 10 in decimal
10

# Scientific notation
iex> 1.0e3 # equivalent to 1000.0 in decimal
1000.0

# Underscore separators
iex> 1_000_000 # equivalent to 1000000 in decimal
1000000

Strings

Strings are data types that represent sequences of characters enclosed in double quotes. They can be used for storing and manipulating text data, such as names, messages, and commands. For example:

# Strings
iex> "Hello"
"Hello"
iex> "World"
"World"

Strings can be concatenated using the <> operator:

iex> "Hello" <> " " <> "World"
"Hello World"

Strings can also be interpolated using the #{} syntax:

iex> name = "Alice"
"Alice"
iex> "Hello #{name}"
"Hello Alice"

Strings are encoded using UTF-8, which means they can contain any Unicode character:

iex> "こんにちは"
"こんにちは"
iex> "👋"
"👋"

Strings are also binaries, which means they are sequences of bytes that can be manipulated at a low level using binary pattern matching and functions from the Bitwise module. For example:

# Binary pattern matching on strings
iex> <<first::utf8, rest::binary>> = "Hello"
"Hello"
iex> first # the code point of the first character 'H'
72 
iex> rest # the rest of the string 'ello'
"ello"

# Bitwise operations on strings
iex> "Hello" &&& <<255>> # bitwise AND operation on each byte of the string with 255 
"Hello"
iex> "Hello" <<< 1 # bitwise left shift operation on each byte of the string by one bit 
<<136, 162, 162, 162, 176>>

Summary

In this part, we learned about three more data types in Elixir: integers, floats, and strings. Integers and floats are numeric data types that can be used for arithmetic operations and can be written in different formats. Strings are sequences of characters that can be used for text data and can contain any Unicode character. Strings are also binaries that can be manipulated at a low level using binary pattern matching and bitwise operations.

Thanks for reading! My goal is to make Elixir accessible and easy to understand for everyone. If you have any questions or feedback, please don't hesitate to reach out. And be sure to check back regularly for more articles on https://dev.to/calbertora, as I strive to make each post as clear and readable as possible.