Signed Chars - What Foolishness Revisited!

[Henry Spencer]

> - The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost (K&R, H&S, and X3J11 resp.) all
> 	agree that a character of the machine's normal character set MUST
> 	appear positive...

It turns out that I have to amend this slightly.  The Father and the Son
are indeed in agreement on this.  The Holy Ghost has chickened out and
watered down this restriction, however:  it only says that the characters
in the "source character set" (roughly, those one uses to write C) must
look positive.  Thus an 8088 C which makes normal ASCII look positive but
lets the "upper-bit" characters look negative is technically legitimate.
Grr.  ("Grr" not just because I goofed, but because I don't like the change.)
-- 
				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry