C38. C sizeof Operator

The sizeof Operator

The sizeof operator allows a program to determine how much memory is required to store values of a particular type. The value of the expression

sizeof ( type-name )

is an unsigned integer representing the number of bytes required to store a value belonging to type-name, sizeof (char) is always 1, but the sizes of the other types may vary. On a 32-bit machine, sizeof (int) is normally 4. Note that sizeof is a rather unusual operator, since the compiler itself can usually deter­mine the value of a sizeof expression.

The sizeof operator can also be applied to constants, variables, and expres­sions in general. If i and j are int variables, then sizeof (i) is 4 on a 32-bit machine, as is sizeof (i + j ). When applied to an expression—as opposed to a type—sizeof doesn't require parentheses; we could write sizeof i instead of sizeof (i). However, parentheses may be needed anyway because of operator precedence. The compiler would interpret sizeof i + j as (sizeof i) + j, because sizeof—a unary operator—takes precedence over the binary + opera­tor. To avoid problems, I always use parentheses in sizeof expressions.

Printing a sizeof value requires care, because the type of a sizeof expres­sion is an implementation-defined type named size_t. In C89, it's best to con­vert the value of the expression to a known type before printing it. size_t is guaranteed to be an unsigned integer type, so it's safest to cast a sizeof expres­sion to unsigned long (the largest of C89's unsigned types) and then print it using the %lu conversion:

printf("Size of int: %lu\n", (unsigned long) sizeof(int));