When Are C Macros Still Beneficial for Debugging?

What Advantages Do C Macros Offer?

Due to concerns about their safety and the existence of safer alternatives, C developers have largely avoided preprocessor macros. However, they do serve specific purposes.

One Beneficial Use Case for Macros

Macros excel as wrappers for debug functions, allowing automatic passing of information like the file and line number:

#ifdef ( DEBUG )
#define M_DebugLog( msg )  std::cout << __FILE__ << ":" << __LINE__ << ": " << msg
#else
#define M_DebugLog( msg )
#endif

Alternative Without Macros

Since C 20, the std::source_location type can replace __LINE__ and __FILE__, enabling the implementation of a non-macro equivalent:

template< class... Args>
void M_DebugLog( Args&&... args) {
  std::cout << std::source_location::current() << ": ";
  std::cout << std::forward<Args>(args)...;
}

Thus, macros offer a convenient way to enhance debugging functionality, even though C 20 provides a more modern approach that avoids preprocessor reliance.

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