Question

I’m a fairly new programmer, and I apologize if this information is easily available out there, I just haven’t been able to find it yet.

Here’s my question:

Is is considered magic numbers when you use a literal number to access a specific element of an array?

For example:

arrayOfNumbers[6] // Is six a magic number in this case?

I ask this question because one of my professors is adamant that all literal numbers in a program are magic numbers. It would be nice for me just to access an element of an array using a real number, instead of using a named constant for each element.

Thanks!

Answer 1

That really depends on the context. If you have code like this:

arr[0] = "Long";
arr[1] = "sentence";
arr[2] = "as";
arr[3] = "array.";

…then 0..3 are not considered magic numbers. However, if you have:

int doStuff() 
{
   return my_global_array[6];
}

…then 6 is definitively a magic number.