Is it necessary to multiply by sizeof( char ) when manipulating memory?

Question

When using malloc and doing similar memory manipulation can I rely on sizeof( char ) being always 1?

For example I need to allocate memory for N elements of type

Answer 1

By definition, sizeof(char) is always equal to 1. One byte is the size of character in C, whatever the numbers of bits in a byte there is (8 on common desktop CPU).

The typical example where one byte is not 8 bits is the PDP-10 and other old, mini-computer-like architectures with 9/36 bits bytes. But bytes which are not 2^N are becoming extremely uncommon I believe

Also, I think this is better style:

char* buf1;
double* buf2;

buf1 = malloc(sizeof(*buf1) * N);
buf2 = malloc(sizeof(*buf2) * N);

because it works whatever the pointer type is.