WORD, DWORD vs. short and int

[TheOutkastDev]

What's the purpose of using WORD or DWORD over shorts or ints in C++?

[Kamron]

I could be wrong (Zippy?) in my experience they have been interchangable. Maybe its only for referencing (compatibility) purposes.

For COM and dlls I use DWORD if its a non C# library.

[Sep102]

There isn't a reason that they have to be used or anything of the sort. They're used for essentially two reasons:

• That using them expresses the intent of the value better (for example, this parameter isn't meant to be a number, but a certain bit sequence [in the case of a WORD/DWORD] or this is meant to be a pointer to a sequence of values in memory [that could be anything; in the case of a WORD */DWORD *]).
• That using them allows your code to be more easily ported to different architectures with different sizes for WORD's/DWORD's (which, of course, is likely something that's never going to happen with an average programmer's code, but it is a possibility nonetheless).

But, I basically just lied, they're mostly used because people see them in Microsoft's example code, in the tutorials for the WIN32 API, in the headers and in Intellisense™, so people use them just in case or to be consistent (or, once in a blue moon, for the bullets above).

And, they are interchangeable in general, but it's still a better idea to use the API's types when working with it (if just for consistency, assurance of correct types or superstition).