On Mon, 31 Jul 2000, Cliff Neighbors wrote:

> being new to PPC I must admit that I was slightly astonished
> to see that by default the C data type "char" is equivalent to "unsigned
> char".

Heh.  Yeah, it's a curious thing.


> this is not only true for the gcc "specs" in netbsd-macppc, but
> moreover the "-fsigned-char" flag appears not to be used in the
> kernel builds.

Moreover, it's a standard on all PowerPC OSes handed down from on high
(IBMoto, IIRC).


> I'm not meaning to bitch here, but I would like to understand the
> rationale if anyone who knows the history would care to comment. 

No idea why they did it originally, but it's been the standard since long
before NetBSD ran on PowerPC.  I'm pretty sure it's stated explicitly in
the standard ABI for PowerPC that was written by... who?  Mot?  IBM?
Dunno.


Later,
David

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