question about local variable

[Eljay Love-Jensen]

Hi Serge,

For local variables at compile time, you need to use sizeof.

If you want to see the local variable size at link time, you'll have to do 
a disassembly.  And even then, it's tricky, because local variable names 
will be hard to discern if debugging info is present, or highly difficult 
without debugging information.

(For non-local variables, you can see the size in the nm dump.)

One bootstrapping trick that some programs use to determine the size of 
certain objects -- such as needing to know the size to alter compilation 
behavior via the preprocessor -- is to compile a small program that outputs 
the size and then use that to create a compile time variable for the 
application.  For instance...

#include <iostream>
#include "MyStruct.h"
using namespace std;
int main()
{
	cout << "#define MYSTRUCT_SIZE " << sizeof(MyStruct) << endl;
}

HTH,
--Eljay