CodeSOD: Are You Doing a Bit?

"Don't use magic numbers," is a good rule for programming. But like any rule, you shouldn't blindly apply it. We know what happens when people do, however: we get constants that might as well be magic numbers.

Still, there are sometimes novel versions of this old song. Shmuel F sends us this one in C:

unsigned int ReadMemory(unsigned int address, char size){ switch (size) { case BIT3: // read byte-size case BIT5: // read int-size }}

The cases of the switch statement are a clear threat- we have constants used that are just magic numbers. But the developer responsible went a little above and beyond in defining this:

#define ZERO 0#define ONE 1#define TWO 2#define THREE 3#define FOUR 4#define FIVE 5#define BIT0 (1 << ZERO)#define BIT1 (1 << ONE)#define BIT2 (1 << TWO)#define BIT3 (1 << THREE)#define BIT4 (1 << FOUR)#define BIT5 (1 << FIVE)

Shmuel writes:

Seeing in the code ZERO and ONE is annoying. but this? this is just picking a fight.

All of this leaves us with one more question: why on Earth is size a bitmask?

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