I think you would need to have a compiler intrinsic type which is 16 bits. That is what the stdint.h file would define (u)int_16 to.
It would be odd for there to be a compiler intrinsic type to be unavailable until a header was included.
The compiler intrinsic type could be a mess like __int16_exactly_t but without it stdint.h would have some magic line which makes a compiler intrinsic available which wasn't before, or generates a new 16-bit type ex nihilo.
So you could have a "#pragma expose_extra_types" in stdint.h but that would not be the conventional approach.
I mostly wanted to make the point that a mere "at least 16 bits" type is not sufficient for some use cases, which is not in response to you but the comment you responded to.
It would be odd for there to be a compiler intrinsic type to be unavailable until a header was included.
The compiler intrinsic type could be a mess like __int16_exactly_t but without it stdint.h would have some magic line which makes a compiler intrinsic available which wasn't before, or generates a new 16-bit type ex nihilo.
So you could have a "#pragma expose_extra_types" in stdint.h but that would not be the conventional approach.
I mostly wanted to make the point that a mere "at least 16 bits" type is not sufficient for some use cases, which is not in response to you but the comment you responded to.