C Pocket Reference

Value Ranges of Integer Types

The value ranges of the integer types are documented in the header file limits.h . The constants, listed in Table 1-25, indicate the largest and smallest values that can be represented by the given type.

Table 1-25. Limits of the integer types

Type	Minimum	Maximum	Maximum of the unsigned type
char	CHAR_MIN	CHAR_MAX	UCHAR_MAX
signed char	SCHAR_MIN	SCHAR_MAX
short	SHRT_MIN	SHRT_MAX	USHRT_MAX
int	INT_MIN	INT_MAX	UINT_MAX
long	LONG_MIN	LONG_MAX	ULONG_MAX
long long(*)	LLONG_MIN(*)	LLONG_MAX(*)	ULLONG_MAX(*)

If char is interpreted as signed, then CHAR_MIN is equal to SCHAR_MIN and CHAR_MAX is equal to SCHAR_MAX. If not, then CHAR_MIN is equal to 0 and CHAR_MAX is equal to UCHAR_MAX.

In addition to the constants listed in Table 1-25, limits.h also contains the following:

CHAR_BIT

The number of bits in a byte (usually 8)

MB_LEN_MAX

The maximum number of bytes in a multibyte character

In the header file stdint.h ^(*), constants are also defined to document the minimum and maximum values of the types wchar_t, wint_t, size_t, ptrdiff_t, and sig_atomic_t, and of the fixed-width integer types, such as int_least32_t. The names of these constants are formed from the type names as follows: the type name is written all in capital letters, and the suffix _t is replaced by _MIN or _MAX. For example:

WCHAR_MIN         // Minimum value of wchar_t
INT_LEAST32_MAX   // Maximum value of int_least32_t

For the unsigned types only the ..._MAX constants ...