Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!pyrltd!datcon!sar
From: sar@datcon.UUCP (Simon A Reap)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: hardcoded constants
Message-ID: <34@datcon.UUCP>
Date: 3 Jan 89 14:19:36 GMT
References: <1988Dec8.173158.11839@utzoo.uucp> <846@starfish.Convergent.COM> <9134@smoke.BRL.MIL> <1988Dec13.172306.16195@utzoo.uucp> <5146@bsu-cs.UUCP> <1988Dec15.190331.2986@utzoo.uucp> <1988Dec21.133910.23182@ateng.ateng.com>
Reply-To: sar@datcon.co.uk (Simon A Reap)
Organization: Data Connection Limited, Enfield, Middlesex, UK
Lines: 27

In article <1988Dec21.133910.23182@ateng.ateng.com> chip@ateng.ateng.com
						    (Chip Salzenberg) writes:
>According to henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer):
>>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' */
>Not hard:
>	foo = malloc(strlen(a)+sizeof("/")+strlen(b));

Ah, but if we want to concatenate more strings, don't we need something like...

#define TO_CAT_3_STRINGS (-1)
#define TO_CAT_4_STRINGS (-2)
	foo = malloc(strlen(a)+sizeof("/")+strlen(b)+sizeof("/")+
			strlen(c)+TO_CAT_3_STRINGS);
	foo = malloc(strlen(a)+sizeof("/")+strlen(b)+sizeof("/")+
			strlen(b)+sizeof("/")+strlen(c)+TO_CAT_4_STRINGS);

with, of course, negative constants to *really* confuse the beginner :-)
(Yes, I know you could have a single 'sizeof("//")' or sizeof("///") as
required, but that's not really the point, is it?)
-- 
Enjoy,
yerluvinunclesimon             Opinions are mine - my cat has her own ideas
Reach me at sar@datcon.co.uk, or ...!mcvax!ukc!pyrltd!datcon!sar