Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!haven!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.std.c
Subject: Re: sizeof in 36-bits machines
Message-ID: <11284@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 14 Oct 89 04:28:44 GMT
References: <272@ssp1.idca.tds.philips.nl>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 12

In article <272@ssp1.idca.tds.philips.nl> dolf@idca.tds.PHILIPS.nl (Dolf Grunbauer) writes:
>Assuming a 36-bit integer (e.g. DEC-10 :-) and 8-bit bytes, what should
>`sizeof(int)' return: 4, 4.5 or 5 ?

C requires that all data types have sizes that are integral multiples
of the size of a "char" (aka "byte").  This means that a 36-bit
implementation would have to make "char" 9, 12, 18, or 36 bits.
(The minimum allowed size is 8 bits, but 8 does not divide 36 evenly.)

I don't say that I LIKE this; I would have preferred permitting such
implementations to express sizeof in terms of bits, not bytes.  However,
that's what was officially decided.