One More Reason to Avoid Macros

Even macros that look harmless can have detrimental effects. For example:

 #define twice(x) ((x)+(x))

The macro, twice, is well parenthesized and performs a simple addition operation. Despite its simplicity, there can still be problems. When twice takes an expression with side effects as an argument, it yields unexpected results:

 int n = 1;int sum;sum = twice(++n);  //guess what?

Since ++n equals 2, you might assume (rather naively) that sum would be 4, but it isn’t. The expression twice(++n) is expanded as ((++n)+(++n)). However, if you had used an ordinary function instead of a macro, like this

 inline int  twice(int x) { return x+x; }

The result will be 4, as expected.