Storing numbers
An integer is a whole number, a number without a decimal place. Integers can be positive or negative. Examples of integers are: 24, -36, 4303, -89730, 3, 7903493, 0.
The reference language shown below will declare a variable named ‘age’ as an integer. This program will only accept a whole number. Anything else will cause it to return an error.
DECLARE age AS INTEGERSEND “Please enter your age” TO DISPLAYRECEIVE age FROM (INTEGER) KEYBOARDWhen the number 45 is entered, the program works fine. However, here's the same program running with something different entered:
Here the user entered the word 'old' when they were asked for their age. The program was expecting an integer (a whole number) and therefore it shows an error. If you want to store a whole number, then you need to use the data type known as an 'integer'.
