C compilers and non-ASCII systems

I would say you can assume ASCII (in the ASCII range) in much the same sense you can assume pointers are just memory addresses: you are almost certain to get away with it...and eventually someone will end up cursing the assumption upon running into a case where it fails. Portability is not just about compatability with existing environments; it's also about compatability with future environments. Just because no such system exists today - even if true - is no reason to play fast and loose with portability. (An explicit decision to not even try to target certain systems can be, mind you, but that's not quite the same thing. For example, I not infrequently write code that will break badly on 16-bit systems, not because I think they don't exist but because I don't care about them enough to consider it worth the bother to make my code handle them.) /~\ The ASCII Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents-montreal.org / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B