I have some experience in programming in C but I would not dare to call myself proficient.
Recently, I encountered the following macro:
#define CONST(x) (x)
I find it typically used in expressions like for instance:
double x, y;
x = CONST(2.0)*y;
Completely baffled by the point of this macro, I extensively researched the advantages/disadvantages and properties of macros but still I can not figure out what the use of this particular macro would be. Am I missing something?
As presented in the question, you are right that the macro does nothing.
This looks like some artificial structure imposed by whoever wrote that code, maybe to make it abundantly clear where the constants are, and be able to search for them? I could see the advantage in having searchable constants, but this is not the best way to achieve that goal.
It’s also possible that this was part of some other macro scheme that either never got implemented or was only partially removed.