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From: ftw@quasar..westford.ccur.com (Farrell Woods)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: C strongly typed?
Message-ID: <26644@masscomp.ccur.com>
Date: 10 Mar 90 00:41:15 GMT
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In article <25F6E8B7.16437@paris.ics.uci.edu> bvickers@ics.uci.edu (Brett J. Vickers) writes:
>ftw@quasar.westford.ccur.com, I write:
>>...The point is that `char' and `int' (and, `short' and `long')
>>all describe *integer* quantities....

>If C were as strongly typed a language as Ada (or Pascal) is, it
>would not allow integers to be accessed and stored as char types.

You're missing the point: C doesn't have a `char' type in the same sense
as Pascal, et. al.  It has integers that can hold greater or lesser ranges
of values, depending on your needs (you describe your need by declaring an
appropriately sized variable).  For instance: 'c' has type `int'.  Really.
Try this:

main()
    {
    printf("%d\n", sizeof ('c'));
    }

and tell us what your compiler says.  It *should* give an answer that is
the same as sizeof (int).

	-- Farrell Woods

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