Why the sizeof(bool) is not defined to be one, by the Standard itself?

The other likely size for it is that of int, being the “efficient” integer type for the platform.

On architectures where it makes any difference whether the implementation chooses 1 or sizeof(int) there could be a trade-off between size (but if you’re happy to waste 7 bits per bool, why shouldn’t you be happy to waste 31? Use bitfields when size matters) vs. performance (but when is storing and loading bool values going to be a genuine performance issue? Use int explicitly when speed matters). So implementation flexibility wins – if for some reason 1 would be atrocious in terms of performance or code size, it can avoid it.

Leave a Comment