Path: news.eternal-september.org!eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: James Kuyper <jameskuyper@alumni.caltech.edu>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Integral types and own type definitions (was Re: Suggested method
 for returning a string from a C program?)
Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2025 14:07:05 -0400
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
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On 3/26/25 10:59, Janis Papanagnou wrote:
> On 26.03.2025 12:33, David Brown wrote:
....
>> Even in C (in a desperate attempt to bring us back on topic for the
>> group), there are no negative integer constants - merely positive
>> integer constants with a unary minus operator applied.
> 
> Is that so? (Harmlessly asking.) - I mean, if I write  int x = -5;
> does it matter (in "C") whether its parsed as  <integer number>  or
>  <negation> <positive number> ?

It does make a difference in some contexts, but not in that one.

The problem I remember best is that if, for instance, the minimum
integer that can be represented by an int has the value -32768, then the
integer literal 32768 represents a value too big to be represented as an
integer, so it has the type 'long int' rather than 'int'. As result,
since the expression -32768 is parsed as the unary - operator applied to
32768, that expression also has the type 'long int'. That makes it
unsuitable as the #definition of INT_MIN. A popular alternative is to
#define INT_MIN as (-32767-1).
The same issue applies to INT_MIN regardless of what value it has, I
chose 16 bits only to reduce typing.