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From: Muttley@DastardlyHQ.org
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Suggested method for returning a string from a C program?
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2025 14:42:06 -0000 (UTC)
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On Thu, 20 Mar 2025 13:36:43 GMT
scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) wibbled:
>bart <bc@freeuk.com> writes:
>>On 20/03/2025 12:09, Tim Rentsch wrote:
>>> Michael S <already5chosen@yahoo.com> writes:
>>
>>>> I suspected that, but was not sure, so suggested to DFS a type that I am
>>>> sure about.
>>> 
>>> The width of  char and [un]signed char   must be at least  8 bits.
>>> The width of          [un]signed short   must be at least 16 bits.
>>> The width of            [un]signed int   must be at least 16 bits.
>>> The width of           [un]signed long   must be at least 32 bits.
>>> The width of      [un]signed long long   must be at least 64 bits.
>>> 
>>> That should be easy enough to remember now.
>>
>>That table suggests that any program mixing 'short' and 'int' is 
>>suspect. If 'int' doesn't need to store values beyond 16 bits, then why 
>>not use 'short'?
>>
>>'long' is another troublesome one. If the need is for 32-bit values, 
>>then it's surprisingly rare in source code.
>
>Long is useless, because Microsoft made the mistake of defining
>'long' as 32-bits on 64-bit architectures, while unix and linux

Probably for backwards compatibility with 32 bit code that did bit twiddling 
with longs.