Is it reasonable to use enums instead of #defines for compile-time constants in C?

Question

I\'m coming back to some C development after working in C++ for a while. I\'ve gotten it into my head that macros should be avoided when not necessary in favor of making the com

Answer 1

Nowadays, in C++ there is no real good reason to use #define for compile-time constants. On the other hand, there are good reasons to use enums or enum classes instead. First and most important - they are much more readable during debugging.

In C you may want to explicitly choose underlying type, which is impossible with enums. That might be a reason to use defines or consts. But enums should be strongly prefered.

Runtime overhead is not a problem - in modern compilers there won't be any difference in generated machine code (as long as sizeof(the_enum)=sizeof(the_type_used_by_define_based_values)).