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do { ... } while (0) — what is it good for?

Asked 2008-11-02T21:36:17.923
459

I've been seeing that expression for over 10 years now. I've been trying to think what it's good for. Since I see it mostly in #defines, I assume it's good for inner scope variable declaration and for using breaks (instead of gotos.)

Is it good for anything else? Do you use it?

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2 Answers

129

It helps to group multiple statements into a single one so that a function-like macro can actually be used as a function. Suppose you have:

#define FOO(n)   foo(n);bar(n)

and you do:

void foobar(int n) {
  if (n)
     FOO(n);
}

then this expands to:

void foobar(int n) {
  if (n)
     foo(n);bar(n);
}

Notice that the second call bar(n) is not part of the if statement anymore.

Wrap both into do { } while(0), and you can also use the macro in an if statement.

answered 2008-11-02T21:39:51.147
-11

Generically, do/while is good for any sort of loop construct where one must execute the loop at least once. It is possible to emulate this sort of looping through either a straight while or even a for loop, but often the result is a little less elegant. I'll admit that specific applications of this pattern are fairly rare, but they do exist. One which springs to mind is a menu-based console application:

do {
    char c = read_input();

    process_input(c);
} while (c != 'Q');
answered 2008-11-02T21:39:02.940

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