🚀 go-pugleaf

My apologies to the uninterested; this discussion probably belongs in
comp.lang.C, but I don't like the spread of misinformation in comp.sys.mac.

>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.

As I pointed out before, this is *HOGWASH*.  K&R specifically guarantee the
behavior, and not as a quirk, but as in integral part of the language.
All chars in expressions are widened to ints!  As K&R point out, this
is marvellous behavior.  Since function arguments (like just about
everything else in C) are expressions, chars in them are widened to ints.

>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.

Since I don't use C++, I'll have to trust you.  But if it is different
from C in such a fundamental manner, I'm not sure I will ever use C++.

>Declare and use data types consistently, is an easy and enjoyable way.

No argument there.

>Clive Steward
----
Steve Dorner, U of Illinois Computing Services Office
Internet: dorner@uxc.cso.uiuc.edu  UUCP: ihnp4!uiucuxc!dorner
IfUMust:  (217) 333-3339