Question

Several people have commented on my C code here, saying that I should use constants as loop counters, rather than hard-writing them. I agree with them, since that is my practice when writing Java code, but I’m having compile-time errors thrown when I try to use constants in array declarations and loop conditionals.

To declare a constant in C, the syntax is #define NAME value.

In my code, I have two constants,BUFFER is the file read buffer, and PACKED is the output array size.

I use BUFFER to initialize char inputBuffer[BUFFER]; as a global variable, which works, but when I try to use PACKED

#define PACKED    7; // this line is in the header of file, just below preprocessors
int packedCount;
char inputPack[PACKED]; //compression storage
for (packedCount=0; packedCount<= PACKED; packedCount++){ 

I get am error: expected ‘]’ before ‘;’ token at char inputPack[PACKED] AND
error: expected expression before ‘;’ token in the loop initialization line. Both errors disappear when I replace PACKED with 7.

Answer 1

You obviously are not posting the code exactly as it appears in your source file.

At the very least, you are missing the semicolon after char inputPack[PACKED].

I strongly suspect that your real source has a semicolon at the end of your macro declaration, which would cause the error. Macro definitions should not be terminated with a semicolon.