Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!nrl-cmf!cmcl2!brl-adm!brl-smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: bitsize() operator (was: The D Programming Language)
Message-ID: <7398@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: 2 Mar 88 18:04:55 GMT
References: <2718@mmintl.UUCP> <1988Feb25.202237.8688@utzoo.uucp> <664@viper.Lynx.MN.Org>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 12

In article <664@viper.Lynx.MN.Org> john@viper.UUCP (John Stanley) writes:
>... addition-to-ansi-C of a new operator that would have a similar
>functionality, but which would return the number of -bits- in
>something.  The name bitsize() would be my suggested name for this
>operator.

It's already basically there:

#include <limits.h>	/* (we may have to rename this header) */
#define bitsize(obj) (CHAR_BIT*sizeof(obj))

The only thing this doesn't work on is bit-fields, functions, or
incomplete types.