Question

How do I get the number of bits in type char?

I know about CHAR_BIT from climits. This is described as »The macro yields the maximum value for the number of bits used to represent an object of type char.« at Dikumware’s C Reference. I understand that means the number of bits in a char, doesn’t it?

Can I get the same result with std::numeric_limits somehow? std::numeric_limits<char>::digits returns 7 correctly but unfortunately, because this value respects the signedness of the 8-bit char here…

Answer 1

If you want to be overly specific, you can do this:

sizeof(char) * CHAR_BIT

If you know you are definitely going to do the sizeof char, it’s a bit overkill as sizeof(char) is guaranteed to be 1.

But if you move to a different type such as wchar_t, that will be important.