why integer size says 4 bytes on 64 bit processor

[Michael Powell]

Shakil Khan wrote:

> Hi All,
> 
> Pardon me if I am writing this mail to the wrong group as I am too new to
> BSD and programming stuff. You can redirect me to right group without
> howling. By seeing some recent conversations(About the top status ;)) in
> this group it made me nervous to ask for a silly question like this, but
> it intrigued my mind too much so thought to delve into it keeping aside my
> fear.
> 
> I have a 64bit intel processor, Dual core machine and I have installed 64
> bit Linux as well as FreeBSD and thought of seeing the size of integer. On
> both the platform my integer is showing 4 bytes which is 32 bit. I thought
> integer are the most basic of the data types and governs the architecture
> as 32 bit or 64 bit, so why integer shows me 4bytes instead of 8. Does
> this means that even on 64 bit architecture we are limited to just 4GB of
> RAM.
> 

No, because INT is not the only variable type available for numerical 
operations. Long and Long Long are 64 bits, and utilizing these types allows 
for larger than 4GB RAM addressing. 

-Mike