Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!cbnewsl!dfp
From: dfp@cbnewsl.ATT.COM (david.f.prosser)
Newsgroups: comp.std.c
Subject: Re: Initialisation of unsigned strings
Keywords: unsigned char, initialisation, standard
Message-ID: <1281@cbnewsl.ATT.COM>
Date: 28 Jul 89 12:36:37 GMT
References: <438@mjolner.tele.nokia.fi>
Reply-To: dfp@cbnewsl.ATT.COM (david.f.prosser)
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 30

In article <438@mjolner.tele.nokia.fi> eru@tnvsu1.tele.nokia.fi () writes:
>Thus it appears that those who want to program in pure ANSI-C without the
>fuzziness introduced by the implementation-dependent behaviour of plain char
>lose the convenience of string literals. This ought to be changed in the
>next version of the standard (if there ever is one). Prior art exists:
>all the C-compilers with unsigned char that I have used compile this usage
>of string literals.

The pANS requires that arrays of any of the three char types can be
initialized with a string literal.  The definition of *character type*
can be found in section 3.1.2.5 (like most of the other mumble types):

	The three types char, signed char, and unsigned char are
	collectively called the character types.

However, one cannot initialize a pointer to a signed or unsigned char
with a string literal (without a cast).

	char ca[] = "abc";				/* valid */
	signed sca[] = "abc";				/* valid */
	unsigned uca[] = "abc";				/* valid */

	char *cp = "abc";				/* valid */
	signed char *scp = "abc";			/* invalid */
	unsigned char *ucp = "abc";			/* invalid */

	signed char *p = (signed char *)"abc";		/* valid */
	unsigned char *p = (unsigned char *)"abc";	/* valid */

Dave Prosser	...not an official X3J11 answer...