proper way to determine arch of *installed* OS, not processor?

[Robert P. J. Day]

  what is the proper incantation to determine the word size of the
installed OS?  that is, if i've installed the 32-bit version of ubuntu
on a 64-bit system, i want to know that the OS is 32 bits, even as the
processor is 64 bits.  i'm sure it's some option of "uname", but i
don't have such a system lying around to test it.  thanks.

rday

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Robert P. J. Day                                 Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA
                        http://crashcourse.ca

Twitter:                                       http://twitter.com/rpjday
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