[Courses] [C] Beginner's Lesson 4B: Arrays, Qualifiers, and Reading Numbers

[Daniel.]

>Second, the signed-type-specifier never existed until the advent
>of ANSI C.  So all the old traditional C compilers will default to
>unsigned!!!  So B carefull.

Not quite. The type-specifier didn't exist, but the type did; the 
specifier was not needed because signed was the default type, as it 
still is under ANSI except in the case of "char", which varies. That 
is, before ANSI, you could say

int a; /*signed*/
unsigned int b; /*unsigned*/

and now you still can, but if you like to spell things out you can also say

signed int c; /*signed*/

if you don't like to spell things out you can shorten the unsigned to

unsigned d; /*unsigned*/

and gcc will even let you get away with

e; /*signed*/

(only if in global scope, and with a warning even then).

-Daniel.
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