Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: hardcoded constants
Message-ID: <1988Dec15.190331.2986@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <1988Dec8.173158.11839@utzoo.uucp> <846@starfish.Convergent.COM> <9134@smoke.BRL.MIL> <1988Dec13.172306.16195@utzoo.uucp> <5146@bsu-cs.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 15 Dec 88 19:03:31 GMT

In article <5146@bsu-cs.UUCP> dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) writes:
>>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.
>
>A suggestion:  If you want to hard-code a constant, use a #define
>anyway...

Trouble is, often it's almost impossible to devise a meaningful name.
I'm not talking about hard-coding things like choice of control characters,
but about things like (in a function to concatenate two strings with a
'/' in between):

	foo = malloc(strlen(a)+strlen(b)+2);	/* 2 for '/' '\0' */

Now, what's a good name for that "2", and how does naming it improve
readability?
-- 
"God willing, we will return." |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
-Eugene Cernan, the Moon, 1972 | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu