title: Typecasting char to long
body: <p>Say I have a variable, <em>a</em> </p>
  
  <pre><code>char a = 0x01;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>and I want to cast this to a long, as in</p>
  
  <pre><code>long b;
  b = (long)a;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Will the upper 3 bytes in <em>b</em> be guaranteed to be 0? With my setup they are 0, but I'm not sure if this is compiler-dependent.</p>