[vox-tech] global variables in C

[Bill Kendrick]

On Fri, Sep 20, 2002 at 10:34:51AM -0700, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:
> 
> 1. name clashing
> 2. readability

These are good reasons.

I'm pretty bad about using globals all over the place, though.

My main reason, however, _is_ for readability.

In _most_ cases, the functions I'm calling need to do things to,
or refer to, the same variables over and over again.

As an example, in my games I open the SDL window surface and name it
"screen".


Rather than having to pass "screen" around to ALL of the functions
(first retrieving it from my "setup()" function), I prefer to keep it
global.

Everyone uses it, it's simpler for me to just leave it 'out there'
for them to use.  Sure, _some_ functions won't use it, but it's
a lot less cluttery to do something like:


  draw_spaceship();

  draw_aliens();


Than it is:


  draw_spaceship(screen, spaceship_x, spaceship_y, spaceship_dir,
                 spaceship_color);

  draw_aliens(screen, aliens_array, NUM_ALIENS);


It's not like this 'abstraction' of the functions benefits me.

I'll rarely, if ever, call "draw_spaceship()" and tell it to draw
the spaceship on some OTHER surface, or at some OTHER X/Y coordinate
than where the spaceship actually _is_! ;)


IANACG (I am not a C guru), YMMV (your milage may vary),
UAYOR (use at your own risk), GATAA (geez, aren't these acronyms annoying?)

;)

-bill!