Why is the Objective-C Boolean data type defined as a signed char?

Posted by EddieCatflap on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by EddieCatflap
Published on 2010-04-05T22:39:15Z Indexed on 2010/04/05 22:43 UTC
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Something that has piqued my interest is Objective-C's BOOL type definition.

Why is it defined as a signed char (which could cause unexpected behaviour if a value greater than 1 byte in length is assigned to it) rather than as an int, as C does (much less margin for error: a zero value is false, a non-zero value is true)?

The only reason I can think of is the Objective-C designers micro-optimising storage because the char will use less memory than the int. Please can someone enlighten me?

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