[samatman]

a char isn't a character, though. you can't add two characters together and get another character. it's a number.

getchar() gets a char. not a character.

[nixpulvis]

All you've convinced me of is that the + operator isn't defined for characters. Which makes sense. Trying to tell me that something called char is really just a byte in disguise (while true in some popular languages) is just irritating and misleading to me.