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Could someone please explain the following: I tried using sizeof command to find out the size of the an int variable by printf("%d\n", sizeof(int)); I was expecting an output of 2. But interestingly the value that I got was 512. Can anyone explain the significance of this value? I tried testing the the size of other variables and I discovered something interesting. 512 in decimal is actually 0200 in hexadecimal. Ignoring the last two bytes, the first two bytes actually gives the value 2 which I was expecting. Similarly, for the size of a character, the value I got was 256. When converted to hexadecimal it is 0100. Looking at the first two bytes actually gives the data size. Could someone please enlighten me why is this so?
I'm glad we don't make a compiler for a 4-bit architectures Just write a compiler for a 1-bit architecture, and run it really fast to approximate a slower 16-bit architecture. That parallel bus stuff is just so 20th century.
Thus we have an inherent conflict on an 8-bit platform! Not really. The "natural size" is not actually a requirement or defintion, but just a suggestion. It can't be a requirement anyway: "natural size" is way to sloppy a word for such usage. The lower boundarys for INT_MAX and -INT_MIN on the other hand are strict requirements. So, in this case, the strict requirement simply overrules the suggestion. Keil is fully correct here, using 16-bit ints even though it's an 8-bit platform. Keeping in mind the minimal requirements of INT_MAX and INT_MIN, 16-bit ints are the "natural size suggested by the execution environment".