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It is therefore the maximum value for variables declared as integers (e.g., as int) in many programming languages. The data type time_t, used on operating systems such as Unix, is a signed integer counting the number of seconds since the start of the Unix epoch (midnight UTC of 1 January 1970), and is often implemented as a 32-bit integer. [8]
[a] Thus, a signed 32-bit integer can only represent integer values from −(2 31) to 2 31 − 1 inclusive. Consequently, if a signed 32-bit integer is used to store Unix time, the latest time that can be stored is 2 31 − 1 (2,147,483,647) seconds after epoch, which is 03:14:07 on Tuesday, 19 January 2038. [7]
However, a binary number system with base −2 is also possible. The rightmost bit represents (−2) 0 = +1, the next bit represents (−2) 1 = −2, the next bit (−2) 2 = +4 and so on, with alternating sign. The numbers that can be represented with four bits are shown in the comparison table below.
A floating-point variable can represent a wider range of numbers than a fixed-point variable of the same bit width at the cost of precision. A signed 32-bit integer variable has a maximum value of 2 31 − 1 = 2,147,483,647, whereas an IEEE 754 32-bit base-2 floating-point variable has a maximum value of (2 − 2 −23) × 2 127 ≈ 3.4028235 ...
A 32-bit register can store 2 32 different values. The range of integer values that can be stored in 32 bits depends on the integer representation used. With the two most common representations, the range is 0 through 4,294,967,295 (2 32 − 1) for representation as an binary number, and −2,147,483,648 (−2 31) through 2,147,483,647 (2 31 − 1) for representation as two's complement.
Programmers may also incorrectly assume that a pointer can be converted to an integer without loss of information, which may work on (some) 32-bit computers, but fail on 64-bit computers with 64-bit pointers and 32-bit integers. This issue is resolved by C99 in stdint.h in the form of intptr_t.
For example, a two's complement signed 16-bit integer can hold the values −32768 to 32767 inclusively, while an unsigned 16 bit integer can hold the values 0 to 65535. For this sign representation method, the leftmost bit (most significant bit) denotes whether the value is negative (0 for positive or zero, 1 for negative).
This table illustrates an example of an 8 bit signed decimal value using the two's complement method. The MSb most significant bit has a negative weight in signed integers, in this case -2 7 = -128. The other bits have positive weights. The lsb (least significant bit) has weight . The signed value is in this case -128+2 = -126.