Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: hardcoded constants
Message-ID: <1988Dec13.172306.16195@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <1988Dec8.173158.11839@utzoo.uucp> <846@starfish.Convergent.COM> <9134@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: Tue, 13 Dec 88 17:23:06 GMT

In article <9134@smoke.BRL.MIL> gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>) writes:
>>How much hard-coding is too much?
>
>Almost any is too much.  It is proper to use explicit constants when it
>is clear what they mean and that they can never need to be changed.  For
>example, assigning 0 or 1 to initialize a counter is proper.  Assuming
>that 03 is always the right character code for a keyboard interrupt
>character (i.e. ASCII ctrl-C) is not proper.

The policy we try to follow is that if you must hard-code a constant,
then it must be accompanied by a comment explaining why that particular
number is there.
-- 
SunOSish, adj:  requiring      |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
32-bit bug numbers.            | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu