Q38328: C 5.10 Doesn’t Implement Multibyte Integer Character Constants

Article: Q38328
Product(s): See article
Version(s): 5.10   | 5.10
Operating System(s): MS-DOS | OS/2
Keyword(s): ENDUSER | | mspl13_c
Last Modified: 28-NOV-1988

Page 28 of the ANSI C draft proposal X3J11/88-001 describes an integer
character constant as being a sequence of one or more multibyte
characters enclosed in single quotation marks, e.g. 'a' or 'ab'.

Page 21 of the "Microsoft C 5.1 Optimizing Compiler Language
Reference Guide" states that an integer character constant
is formed by enclosing a single character from the representable
character set within single quotation marks. It makes no reference to
multibyte character constants (e.g. 'ab'). If a source file has the
character constant defined as follows, the error "C2015: Too many
chars in constant" is generated:

   int ch = 'ab';

This error is correct, because Microsoft C Version 5.10 does not
implement multi-character integer character constants.  Note that
page 29 of the draft standard says that such constructions are
"implementation-defined."

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