Talk:Magic number (programming)

Computing Mid‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Computing, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of computers, computing, and information technology on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ComputingWikipedia:WikiProject ComputingTemplate:WikiProject ComputingComputing articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Computer science Mid‑importance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Computer science, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Computer science related articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Computer scienceWikipedia:WikiProject Computer scienceTemplate:WikiProject Computer scienceComputer science articles

Mid

This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Things you can help WikiProject Computer science with:

Here are some tasks awaiting attention:

Article requests :
- Requested articles/Applied arts and sciences/Computer science, computing, and Internet
Cleanup :
- Computer science articles needing attention
- Computer science articles needing expert attention
Copyedit :
- Computing
Expand :
- Computer science
Infobox :
- Computer science articles without infoboxes
Maintain :
- Timeline of computing 2020–present
Photo :
- Find pictures for the biographies of computer scientists (see List of computer scientists)
- Computing articles needing images
Stubs :
- Computer science stubs
Unreferenced :
- WikiProject Computer science/Unreferenced BLPs
Project-related :
- Tag all relevant articles in Category:Computer science and sub-categories with {{WikiProject Computer science}}

Archives: 1

Data type limits[edit]

Does § Data type limits really belong in this article? I'm not saying it doesn't belong somewhere, but I am not sure that it belongs here. These limits are not really magic numbers, they are fundamental. The article Integer (computer science), to which Integer type redirects, has them, but only in decimal (and in a sense they are "magic" in decimal as seemingly arbitrary, whereas in hex they are plainly not). I am tempted to add the hex into the Integer article and delete this section: there are no redirects to it, but of course other articles might link to it, and I would check thoroughly they are retargeted if consensus were to make that move.

For that matter, the section should probably be renamed "Integer type limits". 94.21.38.126 (talk) 10:17, 29 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I had the same remark. The only justification to keep these limits here would be to provide the name to use instead of writing these magic numbers in code, example INT_MAX in C/C++, however that would become a list of names specific to each language. A reference to headers like <limits.h> in the section "Unnamed numerical constants" should be enough for that article. Teuxe (talk) 13:19, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Advantages of naming magic constants[edit]

The second and last item in the list of advantages,

It is easier to alter the value of the number, as it is not duplicated. [...]
It facilitates parameterization. [...]

strike me as saying essentially the same thing. I would suggest merging the former into the latter. Mjaðveig (talk) 09:30, 25 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]