In article <00102700275503.02765@pinky>,
   Chris Gilbert <chris@buzzbee.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> Just cos I'm a curious bunny and it's not in the FAQ, but why do we use 
> unsigned chars as the default for chars?

I would say that it is because the ARM processor prior to the
StrongARM did not have a 'load byte and sign extend' instruction.
Signed char would have been quite expensive because every load of
a char would have had to have been of the form:

        LDRB R0,[<whatever>]
        MOV  R0,R0,LSL#24
        MOV  R0,R0,ASR#24

Personally I prefer char to be unsigned. I suspect that signed
char became the norm because ASCII only has codes in the range 0
to 127 so the eighth bit, the sign bit, was not an issue for the
Americans who designed C.

Dave Daniels