Char vs. Int

[Joseph S. D. Yao]

In article <3770 at brl-smoke.ARPA> jl42 at andrew.cmu.edu (Jay Mathew Libove) writes:
>I have always been under the impression that a CHAR variable and an INT variable
>were the same in 'C'- yet I now see:
>In the sequence:
> ...
>char ch is the correct declaration.  ...
>		.  Declaring it 'int' is asking for trouble.
>
>Why is it asking for trouble to declare ch as INT when K&R says they are the
>same?

Simple.  It doesn't and they aren't.  K&R 2.2: char is a byte, one
character; int is the machine's natural integer (and examples).
K&R 2.7 mentions chars' automatic conversion, in arithmetic and
arguments, into ints.  (The need for conversion, of course, implies
the difference between the two.)  This is repeated in CRef 2.6,
4., 6.1, 6.6.
-- 

	Joe Yao		hadron!jsdy at seismo.{CSS.GOV,ARPA,UUCP}
			jsdy at hadron.COM (not yet domainised)