Sun Studio 12 Update 1: C++ User's Guide

Interactions

The -xchar option changes the range of values for the type char only for code compiled with -xchar. This option does not change the range of values for type char in any system routine or header file. In particular, the value of CHAR_MAX and CHAR_MIN, as defined by limits.h, do not change when this option is specified. Therefore, CHAR_MAX and CHAR_MIN no longer represent the range of values encodable in a plain char.