Question

I am finding difficulties in understanding the factors on which the size of pointer variables in C is dependent on. I checked few references, the only information I got until now is pointer size is dependent on the processor architecture.I would like to know the following details

• Please explain more on how the architecure impacts the pointer size.
• In general, if the pointer is of x bits then 0 to 2^(X)-1 number of address locations should be there.I am losing track while relating the number of address locations and the actual amount of memory available to the program.

Answer 1

A pointer is a variable that holds the address of another memory location.

Now if you are running on a 32-bit architecture, the CPU’s registers that hold memory references(and most likely, all other registers too) will be of 32-bit length; that’s basically what’s meant by 32-bit(the registers are of 32-bit word length) and hence a pointer(which is a memory location) would usually be 32-bits long(4 bytes)

Same applies to 64-bit CPUs, and hence the pointers in a C program compiled for 64-bit CPUs will usually have 8 bytes length(64 bits)

EDIT:
Please also note that in most modern architectures you don’t really address physical memory with your code; you run and address what’s called a Virtual Memory.

The basic concept is that the CPU/OS combination illude your program that you have the full address space for you.

Again, the address-space(the space you can address in memory) length will depend on how far the CPU can address locations and that (in the general case) would depend on its word-size.