Just curious if u_char is a standard. I've always used it assuming it was defined along with uintX_t types and so on. But am seeing some of our code base transition from u_char to "unsigned char" with a reason "so users don't have to define u_char themselves"..
+2
A:
It's not present in any older header files (except certain specific areas, like Kerberos and networking headers), and not a built-in type in any compiler I know of.
wallyk
2009-12-17 01:33:21
+3
A:
The string u_char does not appear in this draft of the C standard:
http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/WG14/www/docs/n1256.pdf
It's not required by POSIX either, as far as I know.
I think it's in BSD (sys/types.h), and Windows (winsock.h). I would not consider either one to be "a standard" - they aren't formal standards, and they certainly aren't part of standard C, but they are clearly defined and documented.
Steve Jessop
2009-12-17 01:39:47
A:
No, u_char is non-standard. If you need to use a standard type that's equivalent to u_char, you can use uint8_t which is part of the C99 standard library (check your specific platforms/compilers for C99-compliance). stdint.h defines this type (along with many other specific integral types). This Wikipedia article contains more information about stdint.h.
Emerick Rogul
2009-12-17 12:42:51