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From: gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Sizes and types (was: 32bit = 16bit x 16bit)
Message-ID: <6610@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: Thu, 29-Oct-87 23:44:56 EST
Article-I.D.: brl-smok.6610
Posted: Thu Oct 29 23:44:56 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 4-Nov-87 05:36:01 EST
References: <1912@gryphon.CTS.COM> <3294@sol.ARPA>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 9

In article <5657@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> mwm@eris.BERKELEY.EDU (Mike (My watch has windows) Meyer) writes:
>1) Never use "char" to hold something being used as an integer. You
>have no idea how big it may be on some other machine.

You know it's at least 8 bits.  A more serious problem is that a plain
"char" may be signed or unsigned, depending on the implementation, so
if more than the range 0..127 is needed, portability suffers.  If one
has a modern C compiler, explicit "signed char" or "unsigned char" can
be specified, but not all compilers support that yet.