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### 5.1 Builtin Types

Certain types are built in (`int`, `short`, `void`, `float`, etc.); the debugger recognizes these types and knows how to handle them. Thus, don't be surprised if some of the following ways of specifying builtin types do not specify everything that a debugger would need to know about the type—in some cases they merely specify enough information to distinguish the type from other types.

The traditional way to define builtin types is convoluted, so new ways have been invented to describe them. Sun's `acc` uses special builtin type descriptors (‘`b`’ and ‘`R`’), and IBM uses negative type numbers. GDB accepts all three ways, as of version 4.8; dbx just accepts the traditional builtin types and perhaps one of the other two formats. The following sections describe each of these formats.