[James W.McKelvey <mckelvey@maskull.com>] Erroneous Comparisons of Negative Characters

[Paolo Carlini]

Thankg Gaby for the forward!

>MC 0   std::memcmp is comparing as unsigned (I guess that's OK)
>SC 0    Error: std::strcmp is comparing as unsigned
>SN 0    Error: std::strncmp is comparing as unsigned
>SL 0     Error: std::strcoll is comparing as unsigned
>  
>
This /C standard conforming behavior/ (C99, 7.21.4, p1) seems at the 
heart of the problem.

Indeed, a pedantic interpretation of Table 37 appear to imply that the C 
functions, always defined in terms of /unsigned/ chars, cannot be used 
for implementing traits::compare. And, we cannot overlook this as a 
futile technicality (*), since, according to the current standard, 
traits::compare /must/ be used in implementing string::compare.

Shall we perhaps fall back to the slow generic implementation, following 
the letter of the standard? Personally, I'm not happy with this either, 
since string::compare would give results different from std::strcmp!

What do other people think?

Paolo.

(*) I know that nobody likes that much char_traits today... ;)