On Tue, 27 Feb 1996, Greywolf wrote:

> 
> Perhaps it is time for ANSI to revise their standard yet again,
> as it appears that "long==32bits" is an insufficient breadth
> of data bandwidth, especially considering that there exist machines
> with a native width of 64 bits.  Having sizeof(long) < sizeof(int)
> while potentially permissible, is a mite confusing, if not frustrating.

1. the ISO/ANSI C standard does not say that long is 32 bits wide, but it 
   does state that it is at least 32 bits.

2. the C standard states that for each of the types signed char, short int,
   int, and long int, "the range of values of each type is a subrange of
   the values of the next type in the list". This indicates that sizeof(long)
   cannot be smaller than sizeof(int).

In conclusion, the C standard is already capable of handling integral types
of 64 bits (or even larger), but of course the standard does not guarantee
that any given type has a size of e.g. 4 bytes/32 bits.

Erik Bertelsen