Question

int main(void) {
    char x;
    int y=1280;
    x=y;
    printf("%d", x);
}

OUTPUT: 0

I remember that int = 4 byte and char is merely 1 byte. So we’re trying to squeeze a 4 byte data into a 1 byte space, but why is the output 0?

Answer 1

Integer types are the most confusing in C/C++ compilers. In your case the answer is simple though, the code demonstares overflow. Char is an 8-bit data type which can only have values 0-255 and 256 which requires 9bits to represent will overflow to 0. Here 1280 = 256*5 and the least significant 8-bits are zero , hence when assigned to a char the value is 0. It will be interesting to see what the output is in MSB vs LSB systems.