Is this bad programming?

[Karl Heuer]

In article <1990Aug8.100614.1223 at resam.dk> andrew at resam.dk (Leif Andrew Rump) writes:
>[To avoid having #define indices get out of sync with constant arrays,]
>	char errortext[][40] = {
>	    "234567890123456789012345678901234567890",
>	#define FILE_FOOTER_ERROR  1
>	    "File footer error",
>	#define DRAW_FOOTER_ERROR  2
>	    "Draw footer error",
>	}

Yeah, it works; I don't recommend it.  It doesn't work as well if you have
*two* arrays that use the same enumerated indices, for example; or if you want
to put the indices and the strings in separate files.  I would rather keep the
definitions separate, and add a comment like `/* must be kept in sync! */'.

I recently proposed an extension to allow labeled initializers:
	#define FILE_FOOTER_ERROR  1
	#define DRAW_FOOTER_ERROR  2
	char errortext[3][40] = {
	    0:                 "234567890123456789012345678901234567890",
	    DRAW_FOOTER_ERROR: "Draw footer error",
	    FILE_FOOTER_ERROR: "File footer error",
	};
This might make it into gcc (and maybe from there into C-2001?).

>I am a pascal-programmer

I might have guessed.  A C programmer would likely have used `char *[]'
(instead of padding all the strings to the same length like you have to do in
non-extended Pascal) and made the indices start at zero.

Karl W. Z. Heuer (karl at kelp.ima.isc.com or ima!kelp!karl), The Walking Lint