Question

I am wondering why in the following program sizeof(int) returns a different value than sizeof(int*).

Here is the small program:

int main(){
    std::cout<<sizeof(int)<<endl;
    std::cout<<sizeof(int*)<<endl;
    return 0;
}

And here is the output:

4
8

Till now I remember the size of a integer pointer is 4byte(gcc compiler). How can I check the correct size of a pointer? Is it computer dependent?

I am running ubuntu 12.04

# lsb_release -a

Distributor ID: Ubuntu 
Description: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS 
Release:    12.04 
Codename:   precise

Is the size of pointer is not constant(standard size) 8 bytes.

Answer 1

The size of an int and an int* are completely compiler and hardware dependent. If you’re seeing eight bytes used in an int*, you likely have 64-bit hardware, which translates into eight bytes per pointer.

Hope this helps!