> i see two problems with this sort of indirection. if i see NBBY > in the code, i have to look up it's value. NBBY doesn't mean anything > to me. this layer of mental gymnastics that makes the code hard > to read and understand. on the other hand, 8 means something to me. > > more importantly, it implies that the code would work with NBBY > of 10 or 12. (c standard says you can't have < 8 ยง5.2.4.2.1.) > i'd bet there are many things in the code that depend on the sizeof > a byte that don't reference NBBY. > > so this define goes 0 fer 2. it can't be changed and it is not informative.
8 can be a lot of things besides the number of bits in a byte (the number of bytes in a double or vlong, for example). if you're doing enough conversions between byte counts and bit counts, then using NBBY makes it clear *why* you're using an 8 there, which might help a lot. in other contexts, it might not be worth the effort. jumping all over a #define without seeing how or why it is being used is not productive. nor interesting. in fact i can't believe i'm writing this. sorry. russ
