How Can I Write a Short Literal in C ?

Writing Short Literals in C

In C , there are predefined literals for various data types, such as int, long, and double. However, there is no dedicated literal for short. To write a short literal, you can use a cast, as demonstrated below:

<code class="cpp">((short)2)  // This assigns the short literal value 2 to a variable of type short</code>

While not an explicit short literal, this approach behaves similarly and effectively assigns a short value to a variable.

Despite the absence of a direct short literal notation, the compiler typically optimizes the code such that it treats the casted integer as a short, without incurring significant performance overhead. For example, the following code:

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

When compiled and disassembled, results in the following machine code:

movl    , _a
movl    , _b
movl    , _c
movl    , _d

This indicates that the compiler directly assigned the value 2 to all four variables, regardless of their data types. Therefore, you do not need to be overly concerned about performance implications when using this casting approach to write short literals.

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