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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-18T01:34:06+00:00

Here is the following issue: If I am developing on a 32 bit machine

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Here is the following issue:

If I am developing on a 32 bit machine and want my code to be ported to a 64 bit machine here is the senario.

My function internally use a lot of std strings. Now if I want to provide APIs can I ask them to send char * which I can then use internally? Or ask them to send me a __int64 which I convert to a string?

Another reason to use char * in my API was that at least in one type of implementation of unix (a different version of the tool) it picks up data from stdin via argv which is a char *.

In the Windows version I am not sure what to do. I could just ask for __int64 and then convert it into a string…and make it work that way or just use char * as well?

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  1. Editorial Team

    You seem somewhat confused. If the code you are writing is used only within the target machine, recompile will take care of most of the problems. Just don’t rely on specific memory layout and you are fine. Using strings (as opposed to wstrings) probably means that the character encoding is UTF-8 (if not, reconsider) and thus limited form of data exhance (e.g. files) between platforms is also fine.

    In this case, your interface decision comes to selecting between (const) std::string(&), and (const) char*, integer_type (don’t rely on null terminator, please). Deciding factor being whether or not you anticipate need to support other compilers or programming languages.

    Now, if you intent to make the interface callable from other machines (i.e. network interface), you have much tougher job. In that case, specify size of everything explicitly.

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