What does having signed/unsigned short/long do in practice?

Question

This may be a dumb question.

Answer 1

short and long decrease/increase the allocated memory for the int allowing you to hold a maximum smaller or bigger number within them, unsigned and signed are to do with negative and positive numbers, if it is unsigned you can hold no negative numbera however it can hold twice the amount of normal positive numbers while signed allows negtive and positive like normal, I could be wrong

Answer 2

signed: can hold negative and positive values
unsigned: can only hold positive values
short: smaller range but takes up less memory
long: larger range but takes up more memory