Absolute size of 'short'

[Henry Spencer]

In article <214 at ISIDAPS5.UUCP> mike at ISIDAPS5.UUCP (Mike Maloney) writes:
>Is the size of a (signed or unsigned) short integer guarenteed to
>be two bytes?

No.

>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.

For unsigned numbers this would work, *if* you can find an unsigned size
that is two bytes long.  There are no guarantees at all about that.  (For
example, I believe there's a C compiler for the pdp10, and shorts would
pretty well have to be either 18 or 36 bits there.  What they are on a
64-bit machine like a Cray, I have no idea, but I wouldn't count on them
being 16.)

I think the most portable way is to use (perhaps unsigned) long and do an
"&0xffff" at strategic places.
-- 
MSDOS is not dead, it just     |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
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