Stephen Fisher wrote:
> Well, since (g)char defaults to unsigned on most platforms,
No, it doesn't. "char" defaults to *signed* on most platforms, because
1) the PDP-11's "movb" instruction sign-extended, so "char" was made
signed on the PDP-11
and
2) the VAX C implementation did the same, to make as much code continue
to work without change
and
3) almost everybody else did the same for PDP-11 or VAX compatibility.
I think there were a few with unsigned "char" - I think the C for the
UNIX on the Gould (SEL) 32-bit superminis was one - but they were rare.
> The problem is that we
> use guint8 all over the place, but the standard C and GLib functions use
> char.
"guint8" is appropriate for an octet whose contents might, or might not,
be text.
"char" is appropriate for C strings (it's unfortunate that it wasn't
unsigned by default, to avoid ugly sign-extension in, for example, the
is*() macros, with something such as "{unsigned} short short int" for
8-bit integral data types, but I digress...).
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