Actually, I would suggest using both. If you want something that is definitely 32-bits unsigned, use uint32_t. For example, if you are implementing a “struct” to represent an external object whose specification defines one of its fields as 32 bits unsigned. If you want something that is the “natural word size of the machine”, use … Read more
You need to include stdint.h #include <stdint.h>
You don’t need to go to 64-bit to see something like this. Consider int32_t on common 32-bit platforms. It might be typedef‘ed as int or as a long, but obviously only one of the two at a time. int and long are of course distinct types. It’s not hard to see that there is no … Read more
[*] The original intention in C++98 was that you should use <cstdint> in C++, to avoid polluting the global namespace (well, not <cstdint> in particular, that’s only added in C++11, but the <c*> headers in general). However, implementations persisted in putting the symbols into the global namespace anyway, and C++11 ratified this practice[*]. So, you … Read more