Bill Birrell wrote in a message to prabir senapati:

 > arithmetic on the elements of this array. How is this
 > possible, after all elements in the array are
 > characters not integers ? Can u pls explain me a bit .

 BB>     Ints are whole numbers between 0 and MAXINT in value. Chars are
 BB> whole numbers in the range 0 to MAXCHAR (often 255 for unsigned and
 BB> 127 for signed char). Both ints and char can be signed or unsigned.
 BB> Integer arithmetic can be performed on both types.

I still think there's something odd about the concept of a "signed
char",  and I particularly think it's odd that it's in some cases the
default...

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