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

Martin v. Löwis martin at v.loewis.de
Thu Sep 18 11:13:12 EDT 2003

"M.-A. Lemburg" <mal at lemburg.com> writes:

Because that's what was used as basis in the type implementation as well as the codecs (internal and external). Comparisons simply work differently when you're using a signed type which is also why most compilers warn about this -- but you know that.

Yes and no. It appears that you are assuming that Py_UNICODE is always unsigned, however, it is (AFAICT) nowhere documented, and I don't see any strong reason ("it used to be that way" is not a strong reason - code does change over time).

An signed type also doesn't make much sense for things like character storage -- the sign information is useless and you lose a bit for each character.

OTOH, using wchar_t where possible is also valuable. On all systems with a signed wchar_t that we know of, that wchar_t has 32 bits - losing the sign bit does not mean to lose character code points, as Unicode has less than 2**17 code points, anyway.

Regards, Martin

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