Modern C for Absolute Beginners: A Friendly Introduction to the C Programming Language

© Slobodan Dmitrović 2021

S. DmitrovićModern C for Absolute Beginnershttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-6643-4_45

45. Prefer Functions to Function-Like Macros

Slobodan Dmitrović¹  

(1)

Belgrade, Serbia

 

Prefer writing and using real functions to function-like macros. While it might be tempting to write and use function-like macros instead of functions, this might not be a good choice for the following reasons:

• Macros can cause side effects.

• No type checking is performed.

• Macros are preprocessed, not compiled.

• They do not check compiler errors and are harder to debug.

Consider the following example, which uses a macro-like function to square a given parameter:

#include <stdio.h>

#define SQR(a) ((a) * (a))

int main(void)

{

      int x = 1;

      int result = SQR(++x); ...