What exactly does an #if 0 … #endif block do?

Question

In C/C++

What happens to code placed between an #if 0/#endif block?

#if 0

//Code goes here

#endif
         


        

Answer 1

It is a cheap way to comment out, but I suspect that it could have debugging potential. For example, let's suppose you have a build that output values to a file. You might not want that in a final version so you can use the #if 0... #endif.

Also, I suspect a better way of doing it for debug purpose would be to do:

#ifdef DEBUG
// output to file
#endif

You can do something like that and it might make more sense and all you have to do is define DEBUG to see the results.