What are C macros useful for?

Question

I have written a little bit of C, and I can read it well enough to get a general idea of what it is doing, but every time I have encountered a macro it has thrown me complet

Answer 1

While I'm not a big fan of macros and don't tend to write much C anymore, based on my current tasking, something like this (which could obviously have some side-effects) is convenient:

#define MIN(X, Y)  ((X) < (Y) ? (X) : (Y))

Now I haven't written anything like that in years, but 'functions' like that were all over code that I maintained earlier in my career. I guess the expansion could be considered convenient.