Can a variable like 'int' be considered a primitive/fundamental data structure?

Posted by Ravi Gupta on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Ravi Gupta
Published on 2010-01-12T05:02:39Z Indexed on 2010/04/04 16:23 UTC
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computer-science

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variables

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data-structures

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language-agnostic

A rough definition of a data structure is that it allows you to store data and apply a set of operations on that data while preserving consistency of data before and after the operation. However some people insist that a primitive variable like 'int' can also be considered as a data structure. I get that part where it allows you to store data but I guess the operation part is missing. Primitive variables don't have operations attached to them. So I feel that unless you have a set of operations defined and attached to it you cannot call it a data structure. 'int' doesn't have any operation attached to it, it can be operated upon with a set of generic operators.

Please advise if I got something wrong here.

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