Bytewise reading of memory: “signed char *” vs “unsigned char?

You should use unsigned char . The C99 standard says that unsigned char is the only type guaranteed to be dense (no padding bits), and also defines that you may copy any object (except bitfields) exactly by copying it into an unsigned char array, which is the object representation in bytes.

This is one point where C++ differs from C. Generally speaking, C only guarantees that raw memory access works for unsigned char; char may be signed, and on a 2's complement or signed magnitude machine, a -0 might be converted to +0 automatically, changing the bit pattern. For some reason (unknown to me), the C++ committee extends the guarantees supporting transparent copy (no change in bit patterns) to char, as well as unsigned char; on a 2's complement or signed magnitude machine, the implementors have no choice but to make plain char unsigned, in order to avoid such side effects.

(And of course, most programmers today aren't concerned by such machines anyway.).

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