{"id":42,"date":"2012-10-08T08:17:55","date_gmt":"2012-10-08T06:17:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kassebaum.eu\/?p=42"},"modified":"2012-10-09T09:20:41","modified_gmt":"2012-10-09T07:20:41","slug":"naming-of-constants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kassebaum.eu\/blog\/2012\/10\/08\/naming-of-constants\/","title":{"rendered":"Naming of Constants"},"content":{"rendered":"

Normally constants improve the readability and maintainability of your code. One example is the minimum value of a single. You can find it in the unit System.Math:<\/p>\n

...\r\nconst\r\n  MinSingle   =  1.4012984643248170709e-45;\r\n...<\/pre>\n
Instead of writing the float value it is easier and more readable to use the MinSingle constant.
\nBut today I found a way how to do this in a very bad way. Someone had to parse a text file. One feature was that is was possible to delete values. Therefore the writer of the file used a special value, a “*”. That’s why I found the following code:<\/p>\n
const\r\n  cStar = '*';\r\nvar\r\n  sValue: string;\r\n  ...\r\nbegin\r\n  ...\r\n  if sValue = cStar then\r\n    DoDeleteValue\r\n  ...\r\nend;<\/pre>\n
This is complete nonsense! If you really have no idea how to name your constant then simply don’t use it! The name always should refer to the meaning of the constant and not to the content.
\nMaybe something like this is better:<\/p>\n
const\r\n  cDeleteValue = '*';\r\nvar\r\n  sValue: string;\r\n  ...\r\nbegin\r\n  ...\r\n  if sValue = cDeleteValue then\r\n    DoDeleteValue\r\n  ...\r\nend;<\/pre>\n
 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Normally constants improve the readability and maintainability of your code. One example is the minimum value of a single. You can find it in the unit System.Math: … const MinSingle = 1.4012984643248170709e-45; … Instead of writing the float value it … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5],"class_list":["post-42","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tipsandtricks","tag-delphi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kassebaum.eu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kassebaum.eu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kassebaum.eu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kassebaum.eu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kassebaum.eu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.kassebaum.eu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48,"href":"https:\/\/www.kassebaum.eu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions\/48"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kassebaum.eu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kassebaum.eu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kassebaum.eu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}