Of int, char, float, and bool, which is smallest?

Question

The following is from a \"fill-in at home\" programming test that is part of the application process for an MSc in game development at a UK university:

C+

Answer 1

There is no guarantee for the exact size of these types, but there is a guarantee, that char is not bigger than short, and short is not bigger than long.

So, char will always occupy the least amount of memory, but it might not be the only one to do so. It's still guaranteed, that nothing else will have a smaller size.

There might be an exception with bool, however, on some special embedded microcontrollers. They can have a bit variable, which takes exactly one bit, however, they are not in RAM but in special registers.

However, unless your architecture and compiler are especially strange or unusual, you can reasonalbly expect that char is 1, short is 2, long is 4, long long is 8 and int is either 2 or 4, but usually 4 bytes long.