Would you like signs with those chars? [LWN.net]

Would you like signs with those chars?

Posted Oct 25, 2022 7:30 UTC (Tue) by gspr (subscriber, #91542)
In reply to: Would you like signs with those chars? by Sesse
Parent article: Would you like signs with those chars?

Re the aliasing of char: wouldn't uint8_t be a nicely named type for your use?

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Would you like signs with those chars?

Posted Oct 25, 2022 7:34 UTC (Tue) by Sesse (subscriber, #53779) [Link] (1 responses)

It would, except it maps onto unsigned char, which can alias on anything as it stands. And it's about fifty years too late to change that :-)

Would you like signs with those chars?

Posted Oct 25, 2022 19:18 UTC (Tue) by wahern (subscriber, #37304) [Link]

uint8_t isn't required to be typedef'd to unsigned char. An implementation could choose to treat it differently from unsigned char, precisely to avoid the aliasing behavior of char. It seems that in the case of GCC, it may have been C++ partly to blame for the current state of affairs: https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=66110#c13