Detecting 64bit vs. 32bit Linux

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

In article <44aea052$1 at usenet01.boi.hp.com>,
 dwelch91 <donald.welch at hp.com> wrote:

>I need to detect whether the operating system I am running on (not the 
>Python version) is 64bit or 32bit. One requirement is that I need to 
>include support for non-Intel/AMD architectures.

The standard C way would be to check sizeof(void *).