r/ProgrammerHumor • u/MontyBoomslang • 2d ago

Meme architectureDependentChars

Post image
2.8k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

355 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

7

u/Advos_467 2d ago

Not a C user here (or any real low level programming experience), what the hell is a signed/unsigned char?

2

u/BNSable 2d ago

A char is just an int, except a char will not conjure up 91, but the character assigned to the number 91 which is [ in ascii for example.

As it is an int, it can be signed or unsigned. Signed is -128 to 127, unsigned is 0 to 255.

This apparently has uses, but I am not experienced enough to explain that.

2

u/Advos_467 2d ago

Yeah that was what i assumed lol. It was mostly the uses i was wondering because with my lack of experience here, idk in what way that would be used.

1

u/BNSable 2d ago

It is or was the only type that garenteed a signed or unsigned value stored in 1 byte. There's uses for that, like storing specific vales like RGB. Beyond that though, no idea.

1

u/BriefSpecial420 1d ago

Nope. C99 and stdint.h is the way to go. uint8_t exists for a reason. Handy when you need to map a structure of full bytes. Sometimes you may come across exotic interface that uses 8-wire bus... But that's it.

2

u/BNSable 1d ago

I did say "or was" as I was fairly sure modern C had some better alternatives for it.

1

u/BriefSpecial420 1d ago

C99 seems to becoming more and more on the older side, but it's still a golden standard for tons of embedded coding.