Unnecessary Macros (was Re: Unn

[Scott Wilson]

>>Maybe I'm missing the point, but why does a good old fashion function seem
>>to be out of the question.  
>
>I certainly hope you aren't a programmer. The answer is blatently
>obvious: calling overhead.

Actually I am a programmer, but please don't tell Sun what an idiot
I am or they'll want their money back :-).  If you look at what I wrote,
I said "out of the question" not "less efficient".  I am very aware
of calling overhead and why it can be bad.  What I was responding to
was the attitude that there just isn't any good way to square a number
in C.  The solution I suggested was to use a macro when there were no
possible ill side effects and use a function when there were (just like
getc and fgetc).  So what is wrong with that?  Through the years I've
learned one important thing: correctness first, efficiency later.  There's
nothing terribly exciting about a program that works incorrectly and
does it very quickly at the same time.

--
Scott Wilson		arpa: swilson at sun.com
Sun Microsystems	uucp: ...!sun!swilson
Mt. View, CA