Question

Considering that the following statements return 4, what is the difference between the int and long types in C++?

sizeof(int)
sizeof(long)

Answer 1

From this reference:

An int was originally intended to be
the “natural” word size of the
processor. Many modern processors can
handle different word sizes with equal
ease.

Also, this bit:

On many (but not all) C and C++
implementations, a long is larger than
an int. Today’s most popular desktop
platforms, such as Windows and Linux,
run primarily on 32 bit processors and
most compilers for these platforms use
a 32 bit int which has the same size
and representation as a long.