Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!convex!killer!ames!mailrus!husc6!bloom-beacon!bu-cs!dartvax!eleazar.dartmouth.edu!earleh
From: earleh@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Earle R. Horton)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Absolute size of 'short'
Keywords: unsigned wrap-around
Message-ID: <9641@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU>
Date: 2 Aug 88 10:54:39 GMT
References: <214@ISIDAPS5.UUCP>
Sender: news@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU
Reply-To: earleh@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Earle R. Horton)
Organization: Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
Lines: 14

In article <214@ISIDAPS5.UUCP> mike@ISIDAPS5.UUCP (Mike Maloney) writes:
>Dear C-Heavies,
>
>Is the size of a (signed or unsigned) short integer guarenteed to
>be two bytes?  I need to manipulate and compare some unsigned ints
>modulo 65536.  It would be clean and convenient to just let the
>machine handle my wrap-around from 0 to 0xffff and verse-vica.

No.  I have seen at least one compiler where sizeof(short) is one
byte.  About the only thing you can count on is that it is no larger
than an int.  You might be safe in 95% of cases in assuming that a
short is shorter than a long, but I don't recommend even this
assumption. 
Earle R. Horton.  H.B. 8000, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755