Printing unsigned long long using %d

Question

Why do I get -1 when I print the following?

unsigned long long int largestIntegerInC = 18446744073709551615LL;

printf ("largestIntegerInC = %d\n", largestIntegerInC);

I know I should use llu instead of d, but why do I get -1 instead of 18446744073709551615LL?

Is it because of overflow?

Answer 1

In C (99), LLONG_MAX, the maximum value of long long int type is guaranteed to be at least 9223372036854775807. The maximum value of an unsigned long long int is guaranteed to be at least 18446744073709551615, which is 2⁶⁴−1 (0xffffffffffffffff).

So, initialization should be:

unsigned long long int largestIntegerInC = 18446744073709551615ULL;

(Note the ULL.) Since largestIntegerInC is of type unsigned long long int, you should print it with the right format specifier, which is "%llu":

$ cat test.c
#include <stdio.h>

int main(void)
{
    unsigned long long int largestIntegerInC = 18446744073709551615ULL;
    /* good */
    printf("%llu\n", largestIntegerInC);
    /* bad */
    printf("%d\n", largestIntegerInC);
    return 0;
}
$ gcc  -std=c99 -pedantic test.c
test.c: In function ‘main’:
test.c:9: warning: format ‘%d’ expects type ‘int’, but argument 2 has type ‘long long unsigned int’

The second printf() above is wrong, it can print anything. You are using "%d", which means printf() is expecting an int, but gets a unsigned long long int, which is (most likely) not the same size as int. The reason you are getting -1 as your output is due to (bad) luck, and the fact that on your machine, numbers are represented using two's complement representation.

---

To see how this can be bad, let's run the following program:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <limits.h>

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    const char *fmt;
    unsigned long long int x = ULLONG_MAX;
    unsigned long long int y = 42;
    int i = -1;
    if (argc != 2) {
        fprintf(stderr, "Need format string\n");
        return EXIT_FAILURE;
    }
    fmt = argv[1];
    printf(fmt, x, y, i);
    putchar('\n');
    return 0;
}

On my Macbook, running the program with "%d %d %d" gives me -1 -1 42, and on a Linux machine, the same program with the same format gives me -1 42 -1. Oops.

---

In fact, if you are trying to store the largest unsigned long long int number in your largestIntegerInC variable, you should include limits.h and use ULLONG_MAX. Or you should store assing -1 to your variable:

#include <limits.h>
#include <stdio.h>

int main(void)
{
    unsigned long long int largestIntegerInC = ULLONG_MAX;
    unsigned long long int next = -1;
    if (next == largestIntegerInC) puts("OK");
    return 0;
}

In the above program, both largestIntegerInC and next contain the largest possible value for unsigned long long int type.