Do we char?
This message turned up in search, but its forum couldn’t be identified from the original transcript, so it may not be linked into its thread.
Nick, it had been bugging me for weeks since we talked about this. You
once asked if Standard C declared 'char' to be signed or unsigned. I had
hoped it was definite. The latest C Users Journal has an article by PJ
Plauger on Standard C types. Type 'char' is guaranteed to be at least
eight bits. They decided in favor of efficiency, leaving the decision to
the compiler writer. Presumably, the compiler writer chooses the most
efficient method in terms of storage and signed-integer encoding and math
on a given processor. Of course, you have type specifier keywords like
'signed' and 'unsigned' to specify signedness. Plauger mentioned that on a
Cray, int, long and char are all the same size: 64 bits.