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Asked: 2026-05-26T20:22:23+00:00

Is it OK to set debugging macros to empty string when I want to

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Is it OK to set debugging macros to empty string when I want to disable debug checks?
Both assert and BOOST_ASSERT are set to ((void)0) when NDEBUG is defined.

Why not to do something line this?

#ifdef NDEBUG

#define MY_DEBUG_MACRO_FUNCTION(x,y,z) ""

#elif
  // define macros
#endif
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The idea is for the macro to do nothing on release builds. You could define it to an empty string literal, since ""; is a valid expression. I would believe the reason of being defined to ((void)0) is so that the implementation does not emmit warnings for the expression. I have no solid grounds to say this, but some minimal testing shows that ""; generates a warning while ((void)0) doesn’t. Of course, warnings are not standarized so there could be a particular implementation that does emit a warning for ((void)0) as well, but it would have to define assert to something else that doesn’t on NDEBUG builds or it would be quite annoying to the user.

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