manifest constant -- Overview

A manifest constant is a constant that is given a name so it can be defined
differently under different computing environments.  An example is EOF, the
end-of-file  marker,  which  has  wildly  different  representations  under
different  operating  systems.   Note,  too,  that  numerals  are  manifest
constants by definition.

The use  of manifest  constants in  programs helps to  ensure that  code is
portable by  isolating the definition of these elements  in a single header
file, where they need to be changed only once.

The  header file  limits.h defines  a  set of  macros that  express certain
numeric limits of COHERENT's implementation of C.

See Also

__DATE__,
__FILE__,
__LINE__,
__STDC__,
__TIME__,
C preprocessor,
EOF,
EXIT_FAILURE,
EXIT_SUCCESS,
limits.h,
macro,
MB_CUR_MAX,
NULL,
RAND_MAX,
portability,
Programming COHERENT

© 2012 by Stephen A. Ness