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From: bandy@lll-crg.ARpA (Andrew Scott Beals)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.std.internat
Subject: Re: draft ANSI standard:  one change that would *really* help Europe
Message-ID: <8322@lll-crg.ARpA>
Date: Wed, 3-Dec-86 13:58:32 EST
Article-I.D.: lll-crg.8322
Posted: Wed Dec  3 13:58:32 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 3-Dec-86 22:06:16 EST
References: <1382@hoptoad.uucp>
Reply-To: bandy@lll-crg.UUCP (Andrew Scott Beals)
Organization: Computation Research Group, Lawrence Livermore Labs
Lines: 26
Xref: mnetor comp.lang.c:217 comp.std.internat:9

In article <1382@hoptoad.uucp> gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) writes:
>[This is posted to comp.lang.c because mod.std.c seems to be dead.  Love
>those mod groups!]

>[We really need an 8-bit character set and C needs to acknowledge this]

>[John thinks that perhaps "char" should be unsigned - most programs
  would be more correct since they assUme that chars are unsigned]

Well, I heartily agree, but I think that there must be some programs
out there that assume that chars are useful as small signed numbers,
which I would also prefer not to break.  

Also, I think that having chars have different semantics (assumed unsigned
rather than signed like int) would be a bad thing in general.  Perhaps
what is needed is a "tiny" type (ala long and short) that would be signed
and (for now) essentially a signed char.

Of course, this brings in yet another type (oh no!) and yet another
reserved word, but it would make programs nicer.
	andy
-- 
Andrew Scott Beals	(member of HASA - A and S divisions)
bandy@lll-crg.arpa	{ihnp4,seismo,ll-xn,ptsfa,pyramid}!lll-crg!bandy
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