Re: [half OT] About the not-in-common range of signed and unsigned char

Hi there,
when I create some less-than-trivial console program that involves some
kind of pseudo-graphic interface I resort to using the glyphs that lie
in the range [-128, -1] - the simple "char" type is signed in my
implementation.

You know, all those single/double borders, corners, crosses,
pseudo-shadow (dithered) boxes and so on.

Since those characters mess up the encoding of my files, I cannot put
them straight into the source code as char-literals, I have to hard-code
their numeric values.

I noticed that, at least on my implementation, it doesn't make any
difference if I assign a negative value to an unsigned char - the
expected glyph shows up correctly - hence I think I wouldn't have to
worry if the same code is run on an implementation where char is unsigned.

My questions:

- what assumptions (if any) can I make about the presence of those
out-of-common-range characters and their (correct) correspondence with
the codes I use to hard-code?

- assuming it is possible to, how can I ensure that my program displays
the correct "graphics" regardless of the platform / implementation it is
compiled onto?

Note: resorting to an external library that "does the stuff for me" is
not an option here, I'm asking in order to learn, not just to solve an
issue.