Forcing char to be unsigned

Question

I am looking for a way to tell the compiler to handle all char as unsigned char.
We are porting a lot of sources, and in all or other compiler we use a flag to have all characters treated as unsigned char.
In the code a lot constructions occur where the unsigned char is assumed. For instance:
if (strWord[0] < 0xC0)
Etc.
Having signed chars casues a lot of problems. While a compiler flag (or another way, for instance a #pragma or so) would save us lots of work.
Is there any way to tell the Sun Forte C++ compiler to treat all chars as unsigned chars?
Thanks,
Roger.

Answer 1

Unfortunately that solution is no feasible for us. At least not with current deadlines.
Changing all 'char' to 'unsigned char' gives a lot of conflicts in stdlib functions (which expect char instead of unsigned char). Like very std functions as strcpy(), sprintf(), etc...
Creating inline overloads for all these functions will cost a lot of time. And since we use out same sources on different platforms, this will give a lot of 'garbage' code for all other platforms...
So, very unfortunately, we need to find all potential problems now by hand / tools and fix them one by one... (sigh)...
Whilst such a flag could do the same trick in a few seconds... :-(