From K&R: We also declare 'c' to be an int, not a char, so it can hold the value which getchar returns. As we shall see in Chapter 2, this value is act

From K&R: We also declare 'c' to be an int, not a char, so it can hold the value which getchar returns. As we shall see in Chapter 2, this value is actually an int, since it must be capable of representing EOF in addition to all possible 'char's.