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From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.std.c
Subject: Re: Multibyte character constants????
Message-ID: <13268@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 29 Jun 90 09:29:56 GMT
References: <1990Jun28.221927.6823@idt.unit.no>
Organization: U.S. Army Ballistic Research Laboratory, APG, MD.
Lines: 15

In article <1990Jun28.221927.6823@idt.unit.no> arnej@solan1.solan.unit.no writes:
>We have stumbled across the subject of multibyte character
>constants.  Is this defined anywhere?  For example, if we
>say
>main(){printf("%d\n",'AB');}
>what should the output be?

This isn't what the standard refers to as "multibyte characters", but
rather is a very old feature of C, probably dating all the way back to
the first C compiler.  The encoding of such a character constant is
allowed to depend on the specific implementation, precisely to allow
for such natural packing variations as you reported.  Note that 'AB'
has the same size as 'A'; in both cases the type of the constant is int.
The use of such multiple-character constants is nonportable and thus
not recommended for general use.