Printing long int value in C

Question

I have two variables of long int type as shown below:

long int a=-2147483648, b=-2147483648; a=a+b;  printf("%d",a); 

I am getting zero. I tried changing the type to long long int, but I'm still not getting the correct answer.

Answer 1

You must use %ld to print a long int, and %lld to print a long long int.

Note that only long long int is guaranteed to be large enough to store the result of that calculation (or, indeed, the input values you're using).

You will also need to ensure that you use your compiler in a C99-compatible mode (for example, using the -std=gnu99 option to gcc). This is because the long long int type was not introduced until C99; and although many compilers implement long long int in C90 mode as an extension, the constant 2147483648 may have a type of unsigned int or unsigned long in C90. If this is the case in your implementation, then the value of -2147483648 will also have unsigned type and will therefore be positive, and the overall result will be not what you expect.