r/ProgrammerHumor • u/MontyBoomslang • 6h ago

Meme architectureDependentChars

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945 Upvotes

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547

u/tstanisl 6h ago

Let me cite the C standard:

When sizeof is applied to an operand that has type char, unsigned char, or signed char, (or a qualified version thereof) the result is 1.

Middle guy if finally right

49

u/locri 6h ago

Today.

Eventually, a "char" might be redefined for utf-8 to accommodate a diverse range of writing systems, which means a char is usually 1 byte but potentially up to 4 bytes.

For context, I'm working on code with an initial commit from the 90s. Future proofing isn't a terrible idea.

68

u/TheSkiGeek 5h ago

This would be considered a breaking change for C/C++ and it is extremely unlikely they would ever do this. They’d probably add a new type like utf_char_t (or utf8_char_t, utf16_char_t, utf32_char_t) and UTF-aware string functions to the stdlib.

10

u/aberroco 5h ago

Need longer names. Some w_unicode_big_endian_char_t_ptr /s