When I learned the C++ language for the first time I learned that besides int, f

Question

When I learned the C++ language for the first time I learned that besides int, float etc, smaller or bigger versions of these data types existed within the language. For example I could call a variable x

int x;
or
short int x;
The main difference being that short int takes 2 bytes of memory while int takes 4 bytes, and short int has a lesser value, but we could also call this to make it even smaller:

int x;
short int x;
unsigned short int x;
which is even more restrictive.

My question here is if it's a good practice to use separate data types according to what values your variable take within the program. Is it a good idea to always declare variables according to these data types?

Explanation / Answer

Most of the time the space cost is negligible and you shouldn't worry about it, however you should worry about the extra information you are giving by declaring a type. For example, if you:

unsigned int salary;
You are giving a useful piece of information to another developer: salary cannot be negative.

The difference between short, int, long is rarely going to cause space problems in your application. You are more likely to accidentally make the false assumption that a number will always fit in some datatype. It's probably safer to always use int unless you are 100% sure your numbers will always be very small. Even then, it is unlikely to save you any noticeable amount of space.

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