ssize_t and size_t

http://www.delorie.com/gnu/docs/glibc/libc_239.html
Data Type: ssize_t
   This data type is used to represent the sizes of blocks that can be read or written in a single operation. It is similar to size_t, but must be a signed type.

http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/Important-Data-Types.html
— Data Type: size_t
   This is an unsigned integer type used to represent the sizes of objects. The result of the sizeof operator is of this type, and functions such as malloc (see Unconstrained Allocation) and memcpy (see Copying and Concatenation) accept arguments of this type to specify object sizes.