Question

Discussing with people, asking in interviews, or being asked in interviews, I do not know if I know exactly when to write a function as inline or write it as a macro. Apart from compile-time and run-time consideration, is there any suggestion from coding standard point of view.

I think this is one of those question where it comes to the programmer’s preference, or one may say bias towards the usage. I might be a good idea, if members can quote anecdotes, experiences or situations where they have chosen one over the other.

Answer 1

Macros should be used sparingly, in circumstances where a function will simply not do the job. An example, is error reporting. I use this macro for that purpose:

#define ATHROW( msg )                                               \
{                                                                   \
    std::ostringstream os;                                          \
    os << msg;                                                      \
    throw ALib::Exception( os.str(), __LINE__, __FILE__ );          \
}                                                                   \

This has to be a macro in order to get the correct file & line number using the standard __FILE__ and __LINE__ macros , and also to provide the error formatting so I can say things like:

ATHROW( "Value " << x << " is out of range" );