Xref: utzoo comp.lang.c:22169 comp.unix.ultrix:1766
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ginosko!aplcen!jhunix!doug
From: doug@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU (Douglas W O'neal)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.unix.ultrix
Subject: Re: Type of expression sizeof(x)
Message-ID: <2619@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU>
Date: 22 Sep 89 11:56:52 GMT
References: <256@servio.UUCP>
Reply-To: doug@jhunix.UUCP (Douglas W O'neal)
Followup-To: comp.lang.c
Organization: The Johns Hopkins University - HCF
Lines: 20

In article <256@servio.UUCP> penneyj@servio.UUCP (D. Jason Penney) writes:
> [ example deleted ]
>It seems that the sizeof() is promoting the expression to be
>unsigned.  By the way, changing 3 to 3L does NOT make the problem disappear.
> [...]
>Our conversation with DEC re this bug was extremely unhelpful.  They claim that
>the return type of a sizeof() expression is system-dependent.

Quoting from _The C Programming language_, 2nd edition, page 135:
"Strictly, sizeof produces an unsigned integer value whose type, size_t,
is defined in the header <stddef.h>."

From this statement, I do not think that in is unreasonable for DEC
to make sizeof of type unsigned since they are required for ANSI C
to return a unsigned int.

-- 
Doug O'Neal                  doug@jhuvms.hcf.jhu.edu
Homewood Academic Computing  doug@jhuvms.bitnet
Johns Hopkins University     mimsy!aplcen!jhunix!doug