re type casting

[dmr at research.UUCP]

decvax!betz wondered about the construction

	char c;
	...  (unsigned) c;

His example was more complicated but this is the essence.  What is supposed
to happen is that the character is promoted to int, then cast to unsigned.
In other words, the sign extension is not prevented (which is what he
wants to accomplish, as portably and cheaply as possible).

In other words the v7 and DECUS compilers are wrong.  Unfortunately
they are not wrong by accident, or at least my compiler isn't.
To my shame I put in the construction as a special hack to accomplish
essentially the same thing as Betz wanted.  (This was before the unsigned
char type went in.)  In such ways do one's past sins come back to haunt one.

If you really want portability to compilers that don't have unsigned char,
I'm afraid you'll have to use the explicit mask.  At that, it may
not be too bad.  The 11 code generator would need to generate the mask
instruction anyway, and the Vax -O optimizer is smart enough to get rid of it.

		Dennis Ritchie