On 9/19/06, Mario 'BitKoenig' Holbe <Mario.Holbe@tu-ilmenau.de> wrote:
However, the question should rather be: *why* compilers do not define int to be 64bit on a 64bit architecture? And the answer is simple: Yes int should be 64bit on a 64bit architecture, since int is defined as the architectures "natural size" data type. However, it is mostly not because of the elsewise massively increasing porting-expenses due to many programmers who never thought about it and simply assumed int to be 32bit.
Odd, I always thought is was because C did not have enough int types: char 1 bytes short 2 bytes int 4 bytes long 8 bytes If you make an int 8 bytes, you have to find some other way of indicating one of the shorter types (short short maybe? or long char?). Have a nice day, -- Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog@gmail.com> http://svana.org/kleptog/