Classifying characters from a string

#include <ctype.h>
#include <stddef.h>

typedef struct {
  size_t space;
  size_t alnum;
  size_t punct;
} chartypes;

chartypes classify(const char *s) {
  chartypes types = { 0, 0, 0 };
  const char *p;
  for (p= s; p != '\0'; p++) {
    types.space += !!isspace((unsigned char)*p);
    types.alnum += !!isalnum((unsigned char)*p);
    types.punct += !!ispunct((unsigned char)*p);
  }

  return types;
}

The classify function examines all characters from a string and counts the number of spaces, alphanumeric and punctuation characters. It avoids several pitfalls.

• The character classification functions (e.g. isspace) expect their argument to be either representable as an unsigned char, or the value of the EOF macro.
• The expression *p is of type char and must therefore be converted to match the above wording.
• The char type is defined to be equivalent to either signed char or unsigned char.
• When char is equivalent to unsigned char, there is no problem, since every possible value of the char type is representable as unsigned char.
• When char is equivalent to signed char, it must be converted to unsigned char before being passed to the character classification functions. And although the value of the character may change because of this conversion, this is exactly what these functions expect.
• The return value of the character classification functions only distinguishes between zero (meaning false) and nonzero (meaning true). For counting the number of occurrences, this value needs to be converted to a 1 or 0, which is done by the double negation, !!.