Comment by khaledh
5 hours ago
The problem with macro-laden C is that your code becomes foreign and opaque to others. You're building a new mini-language layer on top of the base language that only your codebase uses. This has been my experience with many large C projects: I see tons of macros used all over the place and I have no idea what they do unless I hunt down and understand each one of them.
Like the Linux kernel?
Macros are simply a fact of life in any decent-sized C codebase. The Linux kernel has some good guidance to try to keep it from getting out of hand but it is just something you have to learn to deal with.
Obligatory link to Bourne Shell source code. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22191790
I think this can be fine if the header provides a clean abstraction with well-defined behaviour in C, effectively an EDSL. For an extreme example, it starts looking like a high-level language:
https://www.libcello.org/