signed/unsigned char/short/int/long

[Doug Gwyn]

In article <347 at aber-cs.UUCP> pcg at cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) writes:
>In article <9086 at smoke.BRL.MIL> gwyn at brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>) writes:
>    You're still inaccurate.  "far" and "near" were never at any time in
>    any draft of the proposed ANSI C standard.
>Just a moment! I have just apologized saying that my inaccuracy was to imply
>that near and far eventually made it into dpANS.  I acknowledge that they did
>not make it there, still at one time (fairly long ago) they were considered
>to be going to be part of ANSI C (yes, I know that ANSI C does not yet
>exist), and the usual trade interests advertised (they shouldn't have done
>it, I know) these as ANSI conforming features of their compiler.

I still want to know where you get that idea.  There has never been
any reason to think that "near" and "far" were in any sense related
to ANSI C.  I don't know how much plainer I could make it than in
my sentence cited above.  I would like to see some evidence that
vendors really did advertise their multiple 808x memory-model support
features of their C compilers as in any way related to "ANSI C".

As to your insistence that C integral types should be respecified to
accomplish no more than they current do other than to satisfy your
personal sense of aesthetics, all I can say is that X3J11 did not
make changes to the existing C definition and practice without good
reason, and such a rearrangement would violate both.

Nowhere did I imply that you hadn't read K&R 1st Ed., but it does
seem to me that you never accepted it.  As another poster has
commented, before you suggest what C "should" be, you are obliged
to understand what it is.  You are free to design and promote your
own programming language, but please don't confuse that with C.