How much storage space does the character data type consume?

The character data type typically consumes 1 byte of storage space. This is because in most computing systems, a single character (like a letter or symbol) is represented using a single byte, which consists of 8 bits.

In specific character encoding standards, particularly ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange), each character corresponds to a unique value that is stored in one byte. Extended character sets, like UTF-8, might use more bytes for characters outside the basic ASCII range, but the question specifically addresses standard character data types. Thus, for the majority of simple applications or basic data types, the storage requirement remains 1 byte.

Understanding this is crucial for anyone involved in programming or data management as it affects memory allocation and data handling in applications.