Re: [PATCH] kbuild: treat char as always signed

Jason A. Donenfeld
2022-10-19T20:35:31Z

On Wed, Oct 19, 2022 at 12:30:59PM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> The crypto code uses 'unsigned char *' a lot - which makes a lot of
> sense, since the crypto code really does work basically with a "byte
> array", and 'unsigned char *' tends to really be a good way to do
> that.

I wish folks would use `u8 *` when they mean "byte array".

Maybe the attitude should just be -- use u8 for bytes, s8 for signed
bytes, and char for characters/strings. Declare any use of char for
something non-stringy forbidden, and call it a day. Yes, obviously u8
and s8 are just typedefs, but they're a lot more explicit of intent.

Jason