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

[Tim Peters]

[martin at v.loewis.de]
> 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.

That's fine for gcc then, so long as we don't branch on the contents of
uninitialized memory, and we just fixed a bug of that sort.

If Py_UNICODE ever resolves to a signed 2-byte type, though, the sign bit is
still in play for legit contents.