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

#define is necessary to make things like inclusion guards work, because C++ doesn't have a real module import system.

#define causes a literal textual substitution. The preprocessor understands how to tokenize source code, but doesn't have any idea what any of it actually means. When you write #define sum 1, the preprocessor goes over your code and looks for every instance of the token sum and replaces it with the token 1.

This has a variety of limitations: #define sq(x) x * x will not work right if you use it like sq(3+3); and using #define for a constant does not respect scope in any way, nor does it associate any kind of type with the constant. However, #define can be used (especially in combination with some other special stuff like the # and ## preprocessor operators) to do some magic that is otherwise not possible (except by manually doing what the preprocessor does).