Problem With The Size Of Characters

[spiderferi]

hi there
i've got a problem with the characters in c.
i have declared a variable as a char so it must obviously have
size of a byte, but when i print the variable as an hex, the variable gets printed as something like ( ffffffda ), i can't dig it how this happens anyway.
this is a part of my code that i think is responsible for this confusion.

char leftrotate(char input)
{
    char result;
    int b;
    printf("before :%x\n",input);
 
        b = input & 0x80 ;
    input<<=1;
    if (b)
    { 
 
        input |= 1;
    }
    printf("after :%x\n",input);    
    //result = 0x000000FF & input;
    return input;
 
}

[spiderferi]

please answer, i'm in such a hurry.

[weaknessforcats]

The %x format of printf is an unsigned int. Your char is converted to an unsigned int and then displayed.

If you want to show only the two hex digits in your char, then don't use printf. Write your own function to do this.

[donbock]

According to online documentation, the latest versions of C/C++ support the "hh" size qualifier to inform printf that the argument is a char (eg, "%hhx"). I've never used this feature so I don't know what will happen if you try it.

[weaknessforcats]

Well give it shot and let us know what happened.