what's the mechanism of sizeof() in C/C++?

Question

It seems sizeof is not a real function?

for example, if you write like this:

int i=0;
printf(\"%d\\n\", sizeof(++i));
printf(\"%d\\n\", i);
         


        

Answer 1

You know, there's a reason why there are standard documents (3.8MB PDF); C99, section 6.5.3.4, §2:

The sizeof operator yields the size (in bytes) of its operand, which may be an expression or the parenthesized name of a type. The size is determined from the type of the operand. The result is an integer. If the type of the operand is a variable length array type, the operand is evaluated; otherwise, the operand is not evaluated and the result is an integer constant.

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In response to ibread's comment, here's an example for the C99 variable length array case:

#include 

size_t sizeof_int_vla(size_t count)
{
    int foo[count];
    return sizeof foo;
}

int main(void)
{
    printf("%u", (unsigned)sizeof_int_vla(3));
}

The size of foo is no longer known at compile-time and has to be determined at run-time. The generated assembly looks quite weird, so don't ask me about implementation details...