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

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".  Even when looking at ledgers and accounts, they will primarily see a negative number as an indication of a positive amount moved in the other direction - the minus sign is symbolic, with alternatives such as parentheses or red type meaning the same thing.  When adding up the numbers, they do not see it as adding some positive and negative numbers together - they see it as sometimes adding numbers, sometimes subtracting them.
In almost all everyday situations that appear to use signed numbers, people do not consider negative numbers.  Rather, they think of non-negative numbers with a tag attached for the direction.  We might write that a stock market change is -2%, but we say and think that it has gone down 2% - no negative numbers are involved.
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.

 

So if you ask someone random "Do you know what an integer is?", a
likely response will be "That's a whole number, isn't it?  Like 1, 2
or 3 - not something like a half."

 I suspect that most people who would use the word "integer" without
being prompted would use it correctly.
 

You could be right there, yes.