Constant abuse?

Question

I have run across a bunch of code in a few C# projects that have the following constants:

    const int ZERO_RECORDS = 0;
    const int FIRST_ROW = 0;
    const int DEFAULT_INDEX = 0;
    const int STRINGS_ARE_EQUAL = 0;

Has anyone ever seen anything like this? Is there any way to rationalize using constants to represent language constructs? IE: C#'s first index in an array is at position 0. I would think that if a developer needs to depend on a constant to tell them that the language is 0 based, there is a bigger issue at hand.

The most common usage of these constants is in handling Data Tables or within 'for' loops.

Am I out of place thinking these are a code smell? I feel that these aren't a whole lot better than:

const int ZERO = 0;
const string A = "A";

Answer 1

Am I out of place thinking these are a code smell? I feel that these aren't a whole lot better than:

Compare the following:

if(str1.CompareTo(str2) == STRINGS_ARE_EQUAL) ...

with

if(str1.CompareTo(str2) == ZERO) ...
if(str1.CompareTo(str2) == 0) ...

Which one makes more immediate sense?

Answer 2

Abuse, IMHO. "Zero" is just is one of the basics.

Although the STRINGS_ARE_EQUAL could be easy, why not ".Equals"?

Accepted limited use of magic numbers?