Why do shift operators undergo integral promotion?

[so]

On Tue, 09 Aug 2011 23:20:02 +0300, Andrew Wiley  
<wiley.andrew.j at gmail.com> wrote:

>> Can't we finally get rid of this compatibility issue by separating?
>> . for the whole file which can be enabled with a flag to compiler "dmd
>> -Cmode ...."
>>
>
> That would essentially mean we have two compilers to maintain at the end  
> of
> the day because the semantics of certain operations would depend  
> entirely on
> whether the compiler was in C mode or not.

True, but we are now doing something similar (probably something much  
harder) which unlikely produces a positive outcome.
We say there is a compatibility where there was not (to which extend no  
one knows), on the other hand there are new rules/syntax for the same  
problems in the same language which would create awful amount of  
confusion, not to mention ignoring the solutions to the problems.

On maintaining two compilers, i don't think this is a bigger issue because  
C compiler and spec already here and never changes.