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cvisual-studioenumssizesizeof
Roman Ivasyshyn
Roman Ivasyshyn

Reputation: 135

enum size option in VS 2010

Can I set some options in Visual Studio 2010 to change enum size to 1 byte? Code changes is prohibited. I need some compilation options.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1059

Answers (1)

John Bollinger
John Bollinger

Reputation: 180316

There are two logically different sizes you could be talking about: the size of the enum constants associated with a given enum type, or the size of an object whose own type is the enum type. For example, given

enum example { ONE, TWO };
enum example enum_variable;

the first declaration declares both the type enum example and the constants ONE and TWO.

Perhaps surprisingly, the constants do not have type enum example; rather they have type int, and they will therefore consume whatever amount of space an int requires (C99 6.7.2.2/3).

On the other hand, enum_variable does have type enum example, and more likely it is actually the size of this type that you hope to affect. C gives some constraints there, but designates the specific choice to be implementation-defined (C99 6.7.2.2/4). That's a bit hopeful because it requires implementations to in fact document their choice, and the VS 2010 docs do so if you drill down far enough. Unfortunately for you, the docs say that a variable of enum type is an int. If the docs are to be believed, then, the size of enum variables is not adjustable in VS 2010.

Upvotes: 3

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