void display_menu_item(unsigned char menu_index)
{
  printf("%s\n", some_lookup_table[menu_index]);
  return;
}
    

A lot of programmers would just use an int here, or maybe an unsigned int. However, in my case, there will never be a menu item larger than 256. In fact, there won't be one larger than 50. I would NEVER have a negative menu item, so I typically would not use a signed number here... But int seems to be the universally abused type in C at least.

static inline bool is_some_array_value_positive(int index) {
    if (index < 0 || index > sizeof(array) / sizeof(array[0]))
        return false;
    return array[index] > 0;
}    

Every case is different. You can't analyse this statically because there are many things going on inside the CPU that are unpredictable until the code actually runs.

Sometimes using smaller allocations is a win, sometimes it is a loss, other times it makes no meaningful difference.

one can analize a finite machine statically ....regular mislead.

void _internal_function_(uint32_t);

inline void actual_function(uint8_t a, uint8_t b, uint8_t c, uint8_t d)
{
    _internal_function_(a | b << 8 | c << 16 | d << 24);
}


// use the function
actual_function(1, 2, 3, 4);    

push 0x04030201
call _internal_function_