Thread: Data Types

I know that type "int" is not guaranteed to be a specific size, as well as all of the other primitives, but is there a quick and easy way to dynamically create custom data types that isn't going to break the program when switching to a non-standard platform?

For example, I like to define char, short, int, long int as int8, int16, int32, int64, respectively, and then only use the minimum type required for all possible values held in the variable (if I know the domain prior to defining it) to minimize wasted space. The problem lies in the fact that I may need a variable to hold 64 bits, and define it as int64, but this will be erroneous on a system that defines "long int" as only 32 bits.

I would create typedefs for the different types you want to use. Then, when you change platforms, you only have to update the typedefs to use the proper built-in type for that platform.

Since you can't force a specific size in a platform independent way, that will be the best option I can think of.

However, you should ask why you think you need to do this in the first place. Are you sure you would be wasting space? Are you sure that there won't be other performance penalties for not using the default sizes for the particular platform?

Originally Posted by matsp

All code I've seen that uses this will have something like:

Code:

#if __x86_64__
typedef long int int64;
#else
typedef long long int int64;
#endif

Obviously there may be more variants of processors, either combined into a single #if, or using a #if/#elsif/#else branch-tree.

You can of course also have different include files for different architectures, so you have a "i386/types.h", "x86_64/types.h", "ppc32/types.h", "ppc64/types.h", "arm/types.h", etc, etc.

If you are just starting on a project, you may want to just define the types once, and then let it be a future problem to solve the actual "how to we make this work for multiple architectures".

But as stated above, there is no "one solution works for everything" - since different processor architectures and compilers have different "ideas" about what is what size.

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Mats

That's kind of what I was looking for, I guess. I was really hoping there was something like #ifdef ___64BIT___ that would work for all 64-bit processors, and one for 32-bit, etc.