Modern C++ Programming Cookbook

Limits and other properties of numeric types

Sometimes, it is necessary to know and use the minimum and maximum values representable with a numeric type, such as char, int, or double. Many developers are using standard C macros for this, such as CHAR_MIN/CHAR_MAX, INT_MIN/INT_MAX, or DBL_MIN/DBL_MAX. C++ provides a class template called numeric_limits with specializations for every numeric type that enables you to query the minimum and maximum value of a type, but is not limited to that and offers additional constants for type properties querying, such as whether a type is signed or not, how many bits it needs for representing its values, for floating point types whether it can represent infinity, and many others. Prior to C++11, the use ...