The most useful user-made C-macros (in GCC, also C

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Closed 7 years ago.

What C macro is in your opinion is the most useful? I have found the following one, which I use to do vector arithmetic in C:

#define v3_op_v3(x, op, y, z) {z[0]=x[0] op y[0]; \
                               z[1]=x[1] op y[1]; \
                               z[2]=x[2] op y[2];}

It works like that:

v3_op_v3(vectorA, +, vectorB, vectorC);
v3_op_v3(vectorE, *, vectorF, vectorJ);
...

Answer 1

#define IMPLIES(x, y) (!(x) || (y))

#define COMPARE(x, y) (((x) > (y)) - ((x) < (y)))
#define SIGN(x) COMPARE(x, 0)

#define ARRAY_SIZE(a) (sizeof(a) / sizeof(*a))

#define SWAP(x, y, T) do { T tmp = (x); (x) = (y); (y) = tmp; } while(0)
#define SORT2(a, b, T) do { if ((a) > (b)) SWAP((a), (b), T); } while (0)

#define SET(d, n, v) do{ size_t i_, n_; for (n_ = (n), i_ = 0; n_ > 0; --n_, ++i_) (d)[i_] = (v); } while(0)
#define ZERO(d, n) SET(d, n, 0)

And, of course, various MIN, MAX, ABS etc.

Note, BTW, that none of the above can be implemented by a function in C.

P.S. I would probably single out the above IMPLIES macro as one of the most useful ones. Its main purpose is to facilitate writing of more elegant and readable assertions, as in

void foo(int array[], int n) {
  assert(IMPLIES(n > 0, array != NULL));
  ...

Answer 2

#if defined NDEBUG
    #define TRACE( format, ... )
#else
    #define TRACE( format, ... )   printf( "%s::%s(%d)" format, __FILE__, __FUNCTION__,  __LINE__, __VA_ARGS__ )
#endif

Note that the lack of a comma between "%s::%s(%d)" and format is deliberate. It prints a formatted string with source location prepended. I work in real-time embedded systems so often I also include a timestamp in the output as well.

Answer 3

Foreach loop for GCC, specifically C99 with GNU Extensions. Works with strings and arrays. Dynamically allocated arrays can be used by casting them to a pointer to an array, and then dereferencing them.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <stdbool.h>

#define FOREACH_COMP(INDEX, ARRAY, ARRAY_TYPE, SIZE) \
  __extension__ \
  ({ \
    bool ret = 0; \
    if (__builtin_types_compatible_p (const char*, ARRAY_TYPE)) \
      ret = INDEX < strlen ((const char*)ARRAY); \
    else \
      ret = INDEX < SIZE; \
    ret; \
  })

#define FOREACH_ELEM(INDEX, ARRAY, TYPE) \
  __extension__ \
  ({ \
    TYPE *tmp_array_ = ARRAY; \
    &tmp_array_[INDEX]; \
  })

#define FOREACH(VAR, ARRAY) \
for (void *array_ = (void*)(ARRAY); array_; array_ = 0) \
for (size_t i_ = 0; i_ && array_ && FOREACH_COMP (i_, array_, \
                                    __typeof__ (ARRAY), \
                                    sizeof (ARRAY) / sizeof ((ARRAY)[0])); \
                                    i_++) \
for (bool b_ = 1; b_; (b_) ? array_ = 0 : 0, b_ = 0) \
for (VAR = FOREACH_ELEM (i_, array_, __typeof__ ((ARRAY)[0])); b_; b_ = 0)

/* example's */
int
main (int argc, char **argv)
{
  int array[10];
  /* initialize the array */
  int i = 0;
  FOREACH (int *x, array)
    {
      *x = i;
      ++i;
    }

  char *str = "hello, world!";
  FOREACH (char *c, str)
    printf ("%c\n", *c);

  /* Use a cast for dynamically allocated arrays */
  int *dynamic = malloc (sizeof (int) * 10);
  for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++)
    dynamic[i] = i;

  FOREACH (int *i, *(int(*)[10])(dynamic))
    printf ("%d\n", *i);

  return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}

This code has been tested to work with GCC, ICC and Clang on GNU/Linux.

Lambda expressions (GCC only)

#define lambda(return_type, ...) \
  __extension__ \
  ({ \
    return_type __fn__ __VA_ARGS__ \
    __fn__; \
  })

int
main (int argc, char **argv)
{
  int (*max) (int, int) = 
    lambda (int, (int x, int y) { return x > y ? x : y; });
  return max (1, 2);
}

Answer 4

Someone else mentioned container_of(), but didn't provide an explanation for this really handy macro. Let's say you have a struct that looks like this:

struct thing {
    int a;
    int b;
};

Now if we have a pointer to b, we can use container_of() to get a pointer to thing in a type safe fashion:

int *bp = ...;
struct thing *t = container_of(bp, struct thing, b);

This is useful in creating abstract data structures. For example, rather than taking the approach queue.h takes for creating things like SLIST (tons of crazy macros for every operation), you can now write an slist implementation that looks something like this:

struct slist_el {
    struct slist_el *next;
};

struct slist_head {
    struct slist_el *first;
};

void
slist_insert_head(struct slist_head *head, struct slist_el *el)
{
    el->next = head->first;
    head->first = el;
}

struct slist_el
slist_pop_head(struct slist_head *head)
{
    struct slist_el *el;

    if (head->first == NULL)
        return NULL;

    el = head->first;
    head->first = el->next;
    return (el);   
}

Which is not crazy macro code. It will give good compiler line-numbers on errors and works nice with the debugger. It's also fairly typesafe, except for cases where structs use multiple types (eg if we allowed struct color in the below example to be on more linked lists than just the colors one).

Users can now use your library like this:

struct colors {
    int r;
    int g;
    int b;
    struct slist_el colors;
};

struct *color = malloc(sizeof(struct person));
color->r = 255;
color->g = 0;
color->b = 0;
slist_insert_head(color_stack, &color->colors);
...
el = slist_pop_head(color_stack);
color = el == NULL ? NULL : container_of(el, struct color, colors);

Answer 5

One (of the very few) that I use regularly is a macro to declare an argument or variable as unused. The most compatible solution to note this (IMHO) varies by compiler.

Answer 6

TRUE and FALSE seem to be popular.