On May 1, 2008, at 10:34 PM, Roy T. Fielding wrote:
Er, except that compiler implementations since K&R1 do implement char as signed because that's how the PDP-11 worked. Portability would suck otherwise due to integral types (including char) being promoted to a signed integer when used in an integer context.
The above was addressed by Lucian's post, so I won't repeat it :)
The question is, why on earth would we want to break APR on all pre-C99 platforms for which CHAR_BIT != 8 when we don't even give a rat's ass how many bits are in a char type? I still don't know why APR would require an int8_t other than char.
'char' must contain at least 8 bits, bit may contain more (which is what CHAR_BIT is there for). If we are creating typedefs that ensure a certain bit size, and have 16 and above values, then I can see many reasons why having a 8bit (*known* 8 bit) typedef would also be useful. Not commenting on the patch itself, but rather on the concept :)
