sizeof

sizeof is a unary operator in the programming languages C and C++. It generates the storage size of an expression or a data type, measured in the number of char-sized units. Consequently, the construct sizeof (char) is guaranteed to be 1. The actual number of bits of type char is specified by the preprocessor macro CHAR_BIT, defined in the standard include file limits.h. On most modern computing platforms this is eight bits. The result of sizeof has an unsigned integer type that is usually denoted by size_t.

The operator has a single operand, which is either an expression or the cast of a data type, which is a data type enclosed in parentheses. Data types may not only be primitive types, such as integer and floating-point types, but also pointer types, and compound datatypes (unions, structs, and C++ classes).