hardcoded constants

[Henry Spencer]

In article <5146 at bsu-cs.UUCP> dhesi at bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) writes:
>>The policy we try to follow is that if you must hard-code a constant,
>>then it must be accompanied by a comment explaining why that particular
>>number is there.
>
>A suggestion:  If you want to hard-code a constant, use a #define
>anyway...

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' */

Now, what's a good name for that "2", and how does naming it improve
readability?
-- 
"God willing, we will return." |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
-Eugene Cernan, the Moon, 1972 | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry at zoo.toronto.edu