Integer (computer science) at least 32 bits on any computer. 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. A "short integer" can represent a whole number that may take less storage, while having a smaller range, compared with a standard integer on the same machine. In C, it is denoted by short. It is required to be at least 16 bits, and is often smaller than a standard integer, but this is not required. A
Integer sorting pass over the data must be stable: items with equal digits should not change positions with each other. For greatest efficiency, the radix should be chosen to be near the number of data items, . Additionally, using a power of two near as the radix allows the keys for each pass to be computed quickly using only fast binary shift and mask operations. With these choices, and with pigeonhole sort or counting sort as the base algorithm, the radix sorting algorithm can sort data items having keys in the range from to in time . Many integer sorting algorithms have