Why is argc an 'int' (rather than an 'unsigned int')?

Question

Why is the command line arguments count variable (traditionally argc) an int instead of an unsigned int? Is there a technical reason for t

Answer 1

Here's a history of the C programming language in dmr's own words. It's not stated explicitly (at least not from the quick skim I gave it), but the earliest versions of C didn't support unsigned types. mjv's point about implicit typing to int is also relevant.

EDIT

The Bell Labs link has been broken for a while: here's an alternate link to the same paper.