How do you represent a short literal in C ?

Literal Representation of Short Data Type in C

In C , various literal representations exist for different data types, including int, unsigned int, long, float, double, and char. However, there seems to be a query regarding the literal representation of short data type.

The question arises from the lack of an explicit short literal syntax. By analogy with other data types, attempts such as "2S" yield compiler warnings. The solution, as provided by the response, is to use casting.

To represent a short literal, one can employ the syntax (short)2. While not strictly a short literal, this cast achieves the same behavior. The compiler infers the context and optimizes the code efficiently, avoiding unnecessary int allocation and casting.

For clarity, let's examine the assembly output of the following code snippet:

<code class="cpp">a = 2L;
b = 2.0;
c = (short)2;
d = '';</code>

The disassembler output reveals that all variables assigned with literals (2L, 2.0, (short)2, '2') are initialized using the movl instruction with a value of 2. This behavior demonstrates that the compiler effectively handles the casting and optimizes the code regardless of the literal representation.

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