What exactly does an #if 0 … #endif block do?

Question

In C/C++

What happens to code placed between an #if 0/#endif block?

#if 0

//Code goes here

#endif


        

Answer 1

Not quite

int main(void)
{
   #if 0
     the apostrophe ' causes a warning
   #endif
   return 0;
}

It shows "t.c:4:19: warning: missing terminating ' character" with gcc 4.2.4

Answer 2

It is a cheap way to comment out, but I suspect that it could have debugging potential. For example, let's suppose you have a build that output values to a file. You might not want that in a final version so you can use the #if 0... #endif.

Also, I suspect a better way of doing it for debug purpose would be to do:

#ifdef DEBUG
// output to file
#endif

You can do something like that and it might make more sense and all you have to do is define DEBUG to see the results.

Answer 3

It's identical to commenting out the block, except with one important difference: Nesting is not a problem. Consider this code:

foo();
bar(x, y); /* x must not be NULL */
baz();

If I want to comment it out, I might try:

/*
foo();
bar(x, y); /* x must not be NULL */
baz();
*/

Bzzt. Syntax error! Why? Because block comments do not nest, and so (as you can see from SO's syntax highlighting) the */ after the word "NULL" terminates the comment, making the baz call not commented out, and the */ after baz a syntax error. On the other hand:

#if 0
foo();
bar(x, y); /* x must not be NULL */
baz();
#endif

Works to comment out the entire thing. And the #if 0s will nest with each other, like so:

#if 0
pre_foo();
#if 0
foo();
bar(x, y); /* x must not be NULL */
baz();
#endif
quux();
#endif

Although of course this can get a bit confusing and become a maintenance headache if not commented properly.