C++ : why bool is 8 bits long?

In C++, I'm wondering why the bool type is 8 bits long (on my system), where only one bit is enough to hold the boolean value ?

I used to believe it was for performance reasons, but then on a 32 bits or 64 bits machine, where registers are 32 or 64 bits wide, what's the performance advantage ?

Or is it just one of these 'historical' reasons ?

Because every C++ data type must be addressable.

How would you create a pointer to a single bit? You can't. But you can create a pointer to a byte. So a boolean in C++ is typically byte-sized. (It may be larger as well. That's up to the implementation. The main thing is that it must be addressable, so no C++ datatype can be smaller than a byte)

Memory is byte addressable. You cannot address a single bit, without shifting or masking the byte read from memory. I would imagine this is a very large reason.

A boolean type normally follows the smallest unit of addressable memory of the target machine (i.e. usually the 8bits byte).

Access to memory is always in "chunks" (multiple of words, this is for efficiency at the hardware level, bus transactions): a boolean bit cannot be addressed "alone" in most CPU systems. Of course, once the data is contained in a register, there are often specialized instructions to manipulate bits independently.

For this reason, it is quite common to use techniques of "bit packing" in order to increase efficiency in using "boolean" base data types. A technique such as enum (in C) with power of 2 coding is a good example. The same sort of trick is found in most languages.

Updated: Thanks to a excellent discussion, it was brought to my attention that sizeof(char)==1 by definition in C++. Hence, addressing of a "boolean" data type is pretty tied to the smallest unit of addressable memory (reinforces my point).

The answers about 8-bits being the smallest amount of memory that is addressable are correct. However, some languages can use 1-bit for booleans, in a way. I seem to remember Pascal implementing sets as bit strings. That is, for the following set:

{1, 2, 5, 7}

You might have this in memory:

01100101

You can, of course, do something similar in C / C++ if you want. (If you're keeping track of a bunch of booleans, it could make sense, but it really depends on the situation.)

I know this is old but I thought I'd throw in my 2 cents.

If you limit your boolean or data type to one bit then your application is at risk for memory curruption. How do you handle error stats in memory that is only one bit long?

I went to a job interview and one of the statements the program lead said to me was, "When we send the signal to launch a missle we just send a simple one bit on off bit via wireless. Sending one bit is extremelly fast and we need that signal to be as fast as possible."

Well, it was a test to see if I understood the concepts and bits, bytes, and error handling. How easy would it for a bad guy to send out a one bit msg. Or what happens if during transmittion the bit gets flipped the other way.

Some embedded compilers have an int1 type that is used to bit-pack boolean flags (e.g. CCS series of C compilers for Microchip MPU's). Setting, clearing, and testing these variables uses single-instruction bit-level instructions, but the compiler will not permit any other operations (e.g. taking the address of the variable), for the reasons noted in other answers.

Note, however, that std::vector<bool> is allowed to use bit-packing, i.e. to store the bits in smaller units than an ordinary bool. But it is not required.