Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!decwrl!labrea!aurora!eos!ames!hao!husc6!linus!philabs!gcm!dc
From: dc@gcm (Dave Caswell)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: LightSpeed C 2.15 putchar fix, hope done in LSC3.0, etc.
Message-ID: <413@white.gcm>
Date: 25 Feb 88 12:44:22 GMT
References: <6813@drutx.ATT.COM> <6814@drutx.ATT.COM>
Reply-To: dc@white.UUCP (Dave Caswell)
Organization: Greenwich Capital Markets, Greenwich, CT
Lines: 22

)Nontheless, I think it's very important that this usage and the reasons 
)be well understood, not glossed over with the 'most C compilers promote
)passed char arguments to ints anyway'.  VERY bad practice to depend on
)anything of the sort; it's the sort of foolishness that makes people
)hate C and its programmers.  And it's completely un-necessary.  
)Makes a lot more sense just to do things right.
)
)When you get to C++, the world changes again, and though some
)promotions remain, and others are added, there is a real mire pit
)waiting if you try to make things work by such 'inner' details.
)Trust me on this one.

I trust K&R The C Programming Language.  I quote p. 184  
"First, any operands of type char or short are converted to int ..."

This is the language definition.

All C compilers opromost passed char arguments to ints, just as 
they make 3+4 equal to 7, and I depend on both things happening.

Sorry to be so dogmatic, but I've read this stuff a >100 times and it
isn't true.