Re: Integral types and own type definitions (was Re: Suggested method for returning a string from a C program?)

On 26.03.2025 12:33, David Brown wrote:

On 26/03/2025 10:59, Keith Thompson wrote:

David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> writes:
[...]

Sure.  But most people have forgotten such details long ago - negative
numbers are not part of daily life (except as an indicator of how much
you owe the bank...).  After all, negative numbers are not natural!

>
Most people understand credits and debits.

 
They do.  But they understand it as "I owe the bank $100" - they don't
view it as "I have -$100 in my bank account". [...]

I don't know about contemporary bookkeeping but in my youth they had
two columns with non-negative numbers for both sides, the credits and
debits. Nowadays, e.g. in online banking, we see signed numbers.

 
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> ?

I faintly recall a discussion, I think in context of exponentiation.

But I don't want to (re-)open a can of words...

Janis