C++ – Is size_t the Word Size?

c++size-t

Is size_t the word size of the machine that compiled the code?

Parsing with g++, my compiler views size_t as an long unsigned int. Does the compiler internally choose the size of size_t, or is size_t actually typdefed inside some pre-processor macro in stddef.h to the word size before the compiler gets invoked?

Or am I way off track?

Best Answer

In the C++ standard, [support.types] (18.2) /6: "The type size_t is an implementation-defined unsigned integer type that is large enough to contain the size in bytes of any object."

This may or may not be the same as a "word size", whatever that means.

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