size of int variable

Question

How the size of int is decided?

Is it true that the size of int will depend on the processor. For 32-bit machine, it will be 32 bits and for 16-bit it\'s 16.

Answer 1

The size of integer is basically depends upon the architecture of your system. Generally if you have a 16-bit machine then your compiler will must support a int of size 2 byte. If your system is of 32 bit,then the compiler must support for 4 byte for integer.

In more details,

• The concept of data bus comes into picture yes,16-bit ,32-bit means nothing but the size of data bus in your system.
• The data bus size is required for to determine the size of an integer because,The purpose of data bus is to provide data to the processor.The max it can provide to the processor at a single fetch is important and this max size is preferred by the compiler to give a data at time.
• Basing upon this data bus size of your system the compiler is designed to provide max size of the data bus as the size of integer.

x06->16-bit->DOS->turbo c->size of int->2 byte
x306->32-bit>windows/Linux->GCC->size of int->4 byte