ezyang’s blog

A classic stylistic tip given to C programmers is that inline functions should be preferred over macros, when possible. This advice stems from the fact that a macro and an inline function can achieve the same effect, but the inline function also gets type checking.

As it turns out, you can achieve static type checking with macros, if you're willing to resort to the same cute trick that this following snippet from the Linux kernel uses:

#define module_param_named(name, value, type, perm) \
        param_check_##type(name, &(value)); \
        module_param_call(name, param_set_##type, param_get_##type, &value, perm); \
        __MODULE_PARM_TYPE(name, #type)

Hmm... I wonder what that param_check_##type call is all about. Digging through a few more macro definitions, we see:

#define __param_check(name, p, type) \
        static inline type *__check_##name(void) { return(p); }

So there you go. A throw-away inline function named __check_##name enforces that p is the same type as type. A comment is also given, explaining what's going on:

/* The macros to do compile-time type checking stolen from Jakub
   Jelinek, who IIRC came up with this idea for the 2.4 module init code. */