Modular Programming
It’s not a good programming practice to try to solve a complex problem with a single function. The proper way to approach it is to break the problem into several smaller and simpler pieces that can be understood in more details, and then start to define and build functions to solve those smaller and simpler problems. Keep in mind that each of your functions should do only one task, but do it well.
Programming Style
In this section, I’d like to briefly highlight some points that will help you write clean programs that can easily be read, understood, and maintained.
First, make sure the variable or function names in your program describe the meanings of the variables or tasks of the functions precisely and concisely.
Put comments into your code so that you or the other readers can have clues as to what your code is doing, or at least what the code intends to do, but might do incorrectly.
To help solidify your understanding of this hour’s lesson, you are encouraged to answer the quiz questions and finish the exercises provided in the Workshop before you move to the next lesson. The answers and hints to the questions and exercises are given in Appendix E, “Answers to Quiz Questions and Exercises.”
Quiz
What’s wrong with the following macro definition?
#define ONE 1;
What is the final value assigned to result after the assignment statement is executed?
Q Is the C preprocessor part of the C compiler?
A No. The C preprocessor is not part of the C compiler. With its own line-oriented grammar and syntax, the C preprocessor runs before the compiler in order to handle named constants, macros, and inclusion of files.
Q How do you remove a macro name?
A By putting a macro name after the #undef directive, the macro name can be removed. According to the ANSI C standard, a macro name has to be removed before it can be redefined.
Compiling Your Code Under Conditions
You can select portions of your C program that you want to compile by using a set of preprocessor directives. This is useful, especially when you’re testing a piece of new code or debugging a portion of code.
The #ifdef and #endif Directives
The #ifdef and #endif directives control whether a given group of statements is to be included as part of your program.
The general form to use the #ifdef and #endif directives is
The #define and #undef Directives
The #define directive is the most common preprocessor directive, which tells the preprocessor to replace every occurrence of a particular character string (that is, a macro name) with a specified value (that is, a macro body).
The syntax for the #define directive is
#define macro_name macro_body
