Thread: short char and long char

Hi

int variable take four byte, short int take two byte and long int take eight bytes

the same char takes one byte so long char should be take 2 bytes

so I wrote program to get result

Code:

#include <stdio.h>

int main()
{
    char x;
  //  short char y;
     long char z;
    
    printf("size of int = %d \n", sizeof(x));
   // printf("size of short int = %d \n", sizeof(y));
    printf("size of long int = %d \n", sizeof(z));
    return 0;
}

error: both ‘long’ and ‘char’ in declaration specifiers long char z;
^~~

Does this mean that short / long cannot be used with char?

> Does this mean that short / long cannot be used with char?
Yes.

There's a wchar_t if you want wider characters.

> Thanks okay but I don't understand the reason behind this why we can't use short /long with char ?
Because not every permutation of every qualifier with every type makes sense.

Also, K&R and the subsequent ISO standards have either never considered it, or considered it important enough that being able to say 'long char' was a useful enough idea to be incorporated into the language.

> as I know if we want to modify the size of variable we can use modifier short, long
But that's only fully defined for 'int'.

You can have 'long double', but there is no 'short double' or 'unsigned double'.

You can have 'signed char' and 'unsigned char', but there are no length qualifiers.