Practical C Programming - Chapter 10

C Preprocessor

All preprocessor commands begin with a hash mask (#) in column one and terminate at the end-of-line. A line may be continued by putting a backslash () at the end.

define statement

#define name substitute-text

In most case, a const statement is preferred over #define.
The #define directive can only define simple constants. The const statement can define almost any type of C constant, including things like structure classes.

The #define directive is, however, essential for things like conditional compilation and other specialized uses.

Conditional Compilation

#define DEBUG

#ifdef DEBUG
  printf("%d", some_value);
#endif

#undef DEBUG


#ifndef DEBUG
  printf("production code.");
#endif

#ifdef DEBUG
  printf("Test version. Debugging is on\n");
#else DEBUG
  printf("Production version\n");
#endif /* DEBUG */

The compiler switch -Dsymbol allows symbols to be defined on the command line.

cc -DDEBUG -g -o prog prog.c
cc -DMAX=10 -o prog prog.c

include files

The #include directive allows the program to use source code from another file.

Parameterized Macros

#define SQR(x) ((x) * (x))

No spaces must exist between the macro name (SQR) and the parenthesis. And always put parentheses, ( ), around the parameters of a macro.

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the #if directive for conditional compilations
the #pragma directive for inserting compiler-dependent commands into a file.