How to make sure a int is 4 bytes or 2 bytes in C/C++

Question

I want to know how to announce int to make sure it's 4 bytes or short in 2 bytes no matter on what platform. Does C99 have rules about this?

Answer 1

Try the INT_MAX constant in limits.h

Answer 2

Do you want to require it to be 4 bytes?

If you just want to see the size of int as it is compiled on each platform then you can just do sizeof(int).

Answer 3

C99 doesn't say much about this, but you can check whether sizeof(int) == 4, or you can use fixed size types like uint32_t (32 bits unsigned integer). They are defined in stdint.h

Answer 4

sizeof (int) will return the number of bytes an int occupies in memory on the current system.

Answer 5

If you are using C99 and require integer types of a given size, include stdint.h. It defines types such as uint32_t for an unsigned integer of exactly 32-bits, and uint_fast32_t for an unsigned integer of at least 32 bits and “fast” on the target machine by some definition of fast.

Edit: Remember that you can also use bitfields to get a specific number of bits (though it may not give the best performance, especially with “strange” sizes, and most aspects are implementation-defined):

typedef struct {
    unsigned four_bytes:32;
    unsigned two_bytes:16;
    unsigned three_bits:3;
    unsigned five_bits:5;
} my_message_t;

Edit 2: Also remember that sizeof returns the number of chars. It's theoretically possible (though very unlikely these days) that char is not 8 bits; the number of bits in a char is defined as CHAR_BIT in limits.h.

Answer 6

I assume you want something beyond just the obvious sizeof (int) == 4 check. Likely you want some compile-time check.

In C++, you could use BOOST_STATIC_ASSERT.

In C, you can make compile-time assertions by writing code that tries to create negatively-sized arrays on failure or that tries to create switch statements with redefined cases. See this stackoverflow question for examples: Ways to ASSERT expressions at build time in C

Answer 7

You can use sizeof(int), but you can never assume how large an int is. The C specification doesn't put any assumptions on the size of an int, except that it must be greater or equal to the size of a short (which must be greater or equal to the size of a char).

Often the size of an int aligns to the underlying hardware. This means an int is typically the same as a word, where a word is the functional size of data fetched off the memory bus (or sometimes the CPU register width). It doesn't have to be the same as a word, but the earliest notes I have indicated it should be the preferred size for memory transfer (which is typically a word).

In the past, there have been 18 bit ints (PDP-8) and 24 bit ints (PDP-15). There have been architectures with 36 bit word sizes (PDP-11) but I can't recall what their int size turned out to be.

On Linux platforms, you can peek in

#include <sys/types.h>

to get the actual bit count for each type.

Answer 8

I found last night that visual studio 2008 doesn't support C99 well, and it doesn't support stdint.h. BUT they have their own types. here is a example:

#ifdef _MSC_VER 
typedef __int8  int8_t;
typedef unsigned __int8 uint8_t;
typedef __int16 int16_t;
typedef unsigned __int16 uint16_t;
typedef __int32 int32_t; 
typedef unsigned __int32 uint32_t; 
typedef __int64 int64_t; 
typedef unsigned __int64 uint64_t; 
#else 
#include <stdint.h> 
#endif