[Python-Dev] Re: [Python-checkins]python/dist/src/Objects unicodeobject.c, 2.197, 2.198

[Martin v. Löwis]

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at comcast.net> writes:

> So that puts an end to the claim that it's unlikely wchar_t will resolve to
> a signed type.  Strangely, while char is a signed type under MSVC, wchar_t
> is an unsigned type.  

I think people have learned, over time, that negative characters are
evil. So MS chose to make wchar_t unsigned, as, for 2-byte Unicode,
you might otherwise run into negative characters. For gcc, people
probably also agree that negative characters are evil, but using long
int causes no harm here: All assigned characters are still positive,
as Unicode goes only up to 2**21.

Regards,
Martin