Data types

• There are four basic or primitive data types, from which all others can be created. These are integers, real numbers/floats, Boolean, and char.
• An integer is a whole number, which can be positive, negative, or zero.
• Real is also referred to as float. Real numbers include numbers with decimal places. A real number can be positive, negative, or zero.
• The Boolean data type is based on logic and can have one of only two values, True or False.
• Char refers to a single character. The character can be any letter, digit, or symbol.
• A null value is used to indicate ‘nothing’; the lack of any value, of any type of data.
• The string data type refers to text. A string is a collection of characters and includes spaces, punctuation, numeric digits and any other symbols such as $, &, £, etc. Strings can also contain numeric digits but these will be handled as text characters, not numbers.
• A pointer is a built-in data type in some low-level languages. It will hold the address of a value or object located in computer memory.
• Date/time is a data type used to store a calendar date/time, typically stored as an integer.
• Records are a structure which  can store different data types, but all about the thing. E.g. a student record may contain ID (integer), name (string) and class (string). 
• An array is a collection of elements of the same data type. Each element has its own index number starting from zero.
• Python uses lists instead of arrays. These are very flexible as they can store different data types, unlike most other languages