character在c与c++中的区别

先看看如下代码：

In C：

#include <stdio.h>
int main(){
  printf("Size of char : %d\n",sizeof(char));
  return 0;
 }

In C++：

#include <iostream>
int main(){
  std::cout<<"Size of char : "<<sizeof(char)<<"\n";
  return 0;
 }

毫无疑问，输出的是：Size of char :1

我们知道在character代表的是‘a','b','c','|',....这样的东西，所以我只是将上面的代码稍微修改了一下：

In C：

#include <stdio.h>
int main(){
  char a = 'a';
  printf("Size of char : %d\n",sizeof(a));
  printf("Size of char : %d\n",sizeof('a'));
  return 0;
 }

输出：

Size of char : 1
Size of char : 4

In C++：

#include <iostream>
int main(){
  char a = 'a';
  std::cout<<"Size of char : "<<sizeof(a)<<"\n";
  std::cout<<"Size of char : "<<sizeof('a')<<"\n";
  return 0;
 }

输出：

Size of char : 1
Size of char : 1

所以问题来了，为什么sizeof('a')在c和c++中返回的值不同呢？

解释如下：

在c中character类型，如’a'其实是是一个int，而在C++中则是一个char，所以一个是sizeof(int),一个是sizeof(char)。这样就好理解了。

下面是相关英文解释：

In C, character literals such as 'a' have type int, and thus sizeof('a') is equal to sizeof(int).

In C++, character literals have type char, and thus sizeof('a') is equal to sizeof(char).

This difference can lead to inconsistent behavior in some code that is compiled as both C and C++.

  memset(&i, 'a', sizeof('a'));   // Questionable code 

In practice, this is probably not much of a problem, since character constants are implicitly converted to type int when they appear within expressions in both C and C++.

参考：http://david.tribble.com/text/cdiffs.htm#C99-char-literal(C与C++的区别，很详细）

            http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2172943/size-of-character-a-in-c-c