Compilers-16bit/32bit -what does it mean ?

[Suresh]

Another fundamental question -I think. Something that I find being mentioned
often, Can someone throw somelight on this? Much appreciated>>

Thnx

suresh

[Danny Kalev]

DOS and older versions of Windows used 16-bit words. Thus, the size of
int or a pointer was limited to this size (with a few hacks, pointers
would be augmented to 20 bits and even 32 bits but the fundamental CPU
word was still 16 bit long). With the advent of new processors and
Windows 95, the shift to 32 bits was made. This means that int and
pointers occupy 32 bits. As a result, the underlying memory model, the
alignment of structs and classes, the memory protection techniques and
of course, the .EXE file format changed accordingly. A 32 bit compiler
produces executables that can run on such platforms whereas a 16 bit
compiler produces .exe files for DOS and Window 3.1.

Danny

Suresh wrote:
>
> Another fundamental question -I think. Something that I find being mentioned
> often, Can someone throw somelight on this? Much appreciated>>
>
> Thnx
>
> suresh