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From: gnu@hoptoad.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.std.internat
Subject: Re: draft ANSI standard:  are chars signed?
Message-ID: <1462@hoptoad.uucp>
Date: Wed, 10-Dec-86 02:53:43 EST
Article-I.D.: hoptoad.1462
Posted: Wed Dec 10 02:53:43 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 14-Dec-86 04:08:08 EST
References: <1382@hoptoad.uucp> <8322@lll-crg.ARpA> <783@nscpdc.NSC.COM>
Organization: Nebula Consultants in San Francisco
Lines: 21
Xref: linus comp.lang.c:304 comp.std.internat:38

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 but
> couldn't arrive at an acceptable compromise. We thought about having
> chars be signed and unsigned chars unsigned but we were afraid it would
> break too much code that depended on chars being unsigned. 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.

I would rather they had broken half the code that makes assumptions,
rather than all of it.
-- 
John Gilmore  {sun,ptsfa,lll-crg,ihnp4}!hoptoad!gnu   jgilmore@lll-crg.arpa
Call +1 800 854 7179 or +1 714 540 9870 and order X3.159-198x (ANSI C) for $65.
Then spend two weeks reading it and weeping.  THEN send in formal comments!