Why would someone use #define to define constants?

Question

It\'s simple question but why would someone use #define to define constants?

What\'s the difference between

#define sum 1 and const int su

Answer 1

For the example that you just gave, I would normally use a const. Except of course, the #define can be used for conditional compilation elsewhere:

#if SOME_DEFINE == 1
    // Conditional code
#endif

This is something you can't do with a const. If you don't need the value to be accessible from the preprocessor, I'd say use a const unless there's some reason why that's not possible. There's some stuff on this in the C++ FAQ lite, where they rightly point out that just because the preprocessor is "evil", it doesn't mean you'll never need it.