This chapter provides some tips to use primitive data types.
- Avoid using number literals directly. Use named constants instead. This makes code
easily modifiable and readable.
- Anticipate divide by zero errors.
- Use type conversions explicitly.
- Avoid mixed type comparisons.
- Never ignore compiler
warnings.
- Take proper care for integer divisions.
- Check for integer overflow.
- Check for overflow in intermediate results.
- Avoid additions and subtractions of floating point numbers with a very different magnitude.
- Never do equality comparison between floating point numbers.
- Anticipate rounding errors in floating point numbers.
- Avoid magic characters and strings
- Avoid off-by-one errors
- Initialize strings to null and use strncpy instead of strcpy to avoid endless strings
- Use arrays of characters instead of pointers
- Use boolean variables to document conditions
- Enumerated types instead of integer or string literals increase readability
- Enumerated types in some languages are type-checked which increases reliability
- Enumerated types increase modifiability/maintainability
- Have the first enumerated value as invalid
- Check that array indexes are within the bounds
- Use correct subscripts for multi-dimensional arrays
- Isolate pointer operations in routines
- Check pointers and variables referenced by the pointers before using it
- Set pointers to NULL after freeing them
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