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From: roz@l.cc.purdue.edu.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.std.internat
Subject: Re: draft ANSI standard:  are chars signed?
Message-ID: <475@l.cc.purdue.edu>
Date: Fri, 12-Dec-86 01:09:28 EST
Article-I.D.: l.475
Posted: Fri Dec 12 01:09:28 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 15-Dec-86 06:49:45 EST
References: <1382@hoptoad.uucp> <8322@lll-crg.ARpA> <783@nscpdc.NSC.COM> <1462@hoptoad.uucp>
Reply-To: roz@l.cc.purdue.edu.UUCP (Vu Qui Hao-Nhien)
Organization: Purdue U. Dept. of Mathematics
Lines: 30
Xref: watmath comp.lang.c:368 comp.std.internat:43

In article <1462@hoptoad.uucp> gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) writes:
>In article <783@nscpdc.NSC.COM>, joemu@nscpdc.NSC.COM (Joe Mueller) writes:
>> The committee wanted to "fix" the question of signedness of a char
>> [....]
>> We ended up
>> adopting the compromise of:
>> 	char	- signed or unsigned, implementation defined
>> 	unsigned char
>> 	signed char
>
>Of course, this compromise breaks all the code that depends on chars
>being EITHER signed OR unsigned!  To be portable and "strictly
>conforming", you can't depend on =chars having signs= or =chars having no
>signs=, you just can't depend.

Now I'm not claiming to be a C expert, but isn't it what's going on now, that
you "just can't depend" ?  Isn't it the current state of affairs that char's
are either signed or unsigned, implementation defined ?  If your codes *are*
depending on one or the other, then they are not at all portable.

>I would rather they had broken half the code that makes assumptions,
>rather than all of it.

Of course, unless I'm wrong, they're not breaking ANY code, since all they did
was adding two more types -- signed char and unsigned char -- , not changing
any current type.  So apparently *no* code is broken.
-- 
Hao-Nhien Q. Vu (pur-ee!l.cc.purdue.edu!vu)
                (vu@l.cc.purdue.edu)
[That's "ell", not "one"]