> I agree with you that people such be $#@! explicit about the > signedness of their chars, based on my limited experience :-) Make that declare as 'char' or 'unsigned char' and (cast) as appropriate. Spelling 'signed char' out in full looks messy. -- Jarkko Hietaniemi <jhi@iki.fi> http://www.iki.fi/jhi/ "There is this special biologist word we use for 'stable'. It is 'dead'." -- Jack Cohen