why integer size says 4 bytes on 64 bit processor

[Ivan Voras]

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.

Please read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/64-bit#Specific_data_models

FreeBSD and Linux use the LP64 model.

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 260 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/attachments/20090525/c2ff85d4/signature.pgp