What is the return type of sizeof operator?

Question

What is the return type of sizeof operator? cppreference.com & msdn says sizeof returns size_t. Does it really return a size_t? I\'m using VS2010 Professional, and targ

Answer 1

C++11, §5.3.3 ¶6

The result of sizeof and sizeof... is a constant of type std::size_t. [ Note: std::size_t is defined in the standard header (18.2). — end note ]

You can also do a quick check:

#include 
#include 
#include 

int main()
{
    std::cout<<(typeid(sizeof(int))==typeid(std::size_t))<

which correctly outputs 1 on my machine.

As @Adam D. Ruppe said in the comment, probably the compiler does not complain because, since it already knows the result, it knows that such "conversion" is not dangerous