What does the C++ standard state the size of int,

Question

I'm looking for detailed information regarding the size of basic C++ types. I know that it depends on the architecture (16 bits, 32 bits, 64 bits) and the compiler.

But are there any standards for C++?

I'm using Visual Studio 2008 on a 32-bit architecture. Here is what I get:

char  : 1 byte
short : 2 bytes
int   : 4 bytes
long  : 4 bytes
float : 4 bytes
double: 8 bytes

I tried to find, without much success, reliable information stating the sizes of char, short, int, long, double, float (and other types I didn't think of) under different architectures and compilers.

Answer 1

You can use variables provided by libraries such as OpenGL, Qt, etc.

For example, Qt provides qint8 (guaranteed to be 8-bit on all platforms supported by Qt), qint16, qint32, qint64, quint8, quint16, quint32, quint64, etc.

Answer 2

For 32-bit systems, the 'de facto' standard is ILP32 — that is, int, long and pointer are all 32-bit quantities.

For 64-bit systems, the primary Unix 'de facto' standard is LP64 — long and pointer are 64-bit (but int is 32-bit). The Windows 64-bit standard is LLP64 — long long and pointer are 64-bit (but long and int are both 32-bit).

At one time, some Unix systems used an ILP64 organization.

None of these de facto standards is legislated by the C standard (ISO/IEC 9899:1999), but all are permitted by it.

And, by definition, sizeof(char) is 1, notwithstanding the test in the Perl configure script.

Note that there were machines (Crays) where CHAR_BIT was much larger than 8. That meant, IIRC, that sizeof(int) was also 1, because both char and int were 32-bit.

Answer 3

As others have answered, the "standards" all leave most of the details as "implementation defined" and only state that type "char" is at leat "char_bis" wide, and that "char <= short <= int <= long <= long long" (float and double are pretty much consistent with the IEEE floating point standards, and long double is typically same as double--but may be larger on more current implementations).

Part of the reasons for not having very specific and exact values is because languages like C/C++ were designed to be portable to a large number of hardware platforms--Including computer systems in which the "char" word-size may be 4-bits or 7-bits, or even some value other than the "8-/16-/32-/64-bit" computers the average home computer user is exposed to. (Word-size here meaning how many bits wide the system normally operates on--Again, it's not always 8-bits as home computer users may expect.)

If you really need a object (in the sense of a series of bits representing an integral value) of a specific number of bits, most compilers have some method of specifying that; But it's generally not portable, even between compilers made by the ame company but for different platforms. Some standards and practices (especially limits.h and the like) are common enough that most compilers will have support for determining at the best-fit type for a specific range of values, but not the number of bits used. (That is, if you know you need to hold values between 0 and 127, you can determine that your compiler supports an "int8" type of 8-bits which will be large enought to hold the full range desired, but not something like an "int7" type which would be an exact match for 7-bits.)

Note: Many Un*x source packages used "./configure" script which will probe the compiler/system's capabilities and output a suitable Makefile and config.h. You might examine some of these scripts to see how they work and how they probe the comiler/system capabilities, and follow their lead.

Answer 4

As mentioned the size should reflect the current architecture. You could take a peak around in limits.h if you want to see how your current compiler is handling things.

Answer 5

For floating point numbers there is a standard (IEEE754): floats are 32 bit and doubles are 64. This is a hardware standard, not a C++ standard, so compilers could theoretically define float and double to some other size, but in practice I've never seen an architecture that used anything different.

Answer 6

From Alex B The C++ standard does not specify the size of integral types in bytes, but it specifies minimum ranges they must be able to hold. You can infer minimum size in bits from the required range. You can infer minimum size in bytes from that and the value of the CHAR_BIT macro that defines the number of bits in a byte (in all but the most obscure platforms it's 8, and it can't be less than 8).

One additional constraint for char is that its size is always 1 byte, or CHAR_BIT bits (hence the name).

Minimum ranges required by the standard (page 22) are:

and Data Type Ranges on MSDN:

signed char: -127 to 127 (note, not -128 to 127; this accommodates 1's-complement platforms) unsigned char: 0 to 255 "plain" char: -127 to 127 or 0 to 255 (depends on default char signedness) signed short: -32767 to 32767 unsigned short: 0 to 65535 signed int: -32767 to 32767 unsigned int: 0 to 65535 signed long: -2147483647 to 2147483647 unsigned long: 0 to 4294967295 signed long long: -9223372036854775807 to 9223372036854775807 unsigned long long: 0 to 18446744073709551615 A C++ (or C) implementation can define the size of a type in bytes sizeof(type) to any value, as long as

the expression sizeof(type) * CHAR_BIT evaluates to the number of bits enough to contain required ranges, and the ordering of type is still valid (e.g. sizeof(int) <= sizeof(long)). The actual implementation-specific ranges can be found in header in C, or in C++ (or even better, templated std::numeric_limits in header).

For example, this is how you will find maximum range for int:

C:

#include <limits.h>
const int min_int = INT_MIN;
const int max_int = INT_MAX;

C++:

#include <limits>
const int min_int = std::numeric_limits<int>::min();
const int max_int = std::numeric_limits<int>::max();

This is correct, however, you were also right in saying that: char : 1 byte short : 2 bytes int : 4 bytes long : 4 bytes float : 4 bytes double : 8 bytes

Because 32 bit architectures are still the default and most used, and they have kept these standard sizes since the pre-32 bit days when memory was less available, and for backwards compatibility and standardization it remained the same. Even 64 bit systems tend to use these and have extentions/modifications. Please reference this for more information:

http://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/types