Is size_t the word size?

Question

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

Answer 1

Such definitions are all implementation defined. I would use the sizeof(char *), or maybe sizeof(void *), if I needed a best guess size. The best this gives is the apparent word size software uses... what the hardware really has may be different (e.g., a 32-bit system may support 64-bit integers by software).

Also if you are new to the C languages see stdint.h for all sorts of material on integer sizes.