What is the bit size of long on 64-bit Windows?

Question

Not to long ago, someone told me that long are not 64 bits on 64 bit machines and I should always use int. This did not make sense to me. I have se

Answer 1

The easiest way to get to know it for your compiler/platform:

#include 

int main() {
  std::cout << sizeof(long)*8 << std::endl;
}

Themultiplication by 8 is to get bits from bytes.

When you need a particular size, it is often easiest to use one of the predefined types of a library. If that is undesirable, you can do what often happens with autoconf software and have the configuration system determine the right type for the needed size.