Thread: What are the benefits of using macro functions over regular functions

I've been working with a codebase in which the developer has interspersed a lot of macro functions in with standard functions in C. I would like to know the main pros of why a programmer would use a macro function over a standard function because looking at the code, I cannot really tell why the programmer chose macro functions over standard functions and would like to get more educated with this. Thnak you.

• If you needed to simulate a generic function (e.g., the kind that might be done with a function template in C++) and using void pointers was not desired, you might consider a function-style macro since types can be passed as arguments to function-style macros.
• In the absence of inline function support, you might define a function-style macro to manually inline code.
• Sometimes a macro could be used to reduce repeated writing of boilerplate code.

Ahh thank you laserlight!