What does extern inline do?

Question

I understand that inline by itself is a suggestion to the compiler, and at its discretion it may or may not inline the function, and it will also produce linkab

Answer 1

Macros are your choice here rather than the inline functions. A rare occasion where macros rule over inline functions. Try the following: I wrote this "MACRO MAGIC" code and it should work! Tested on gcc/g++ Ubuntu 10.04

//(c) 2012 enthusiasticgeek (LOGGING example for StackOverflow)

#ifdef __cplusplus

#include 
#include 

#else

#include 
#include 

#endif

//=========== MACRO MAGIC BEGINS ============

//Trim full file path
#define __SFILE__ (strrchr(__FILE__,'/') ? strrchr(__FILE__,'/')+1 : __FILE__ )

#define STRINGIFY_N(x) #x
#define TOSTRING_N(x) STRINGIFY_N(x)
#define _LINE (TOSTRING_N(__LINE__))

#define LOG(x, s...) printf("(%s:%s:%s)"  x "\n" , __SFILE__, __func__, _LINE, ## s);

//=========== MACRO MAGIC ENDS ============

int main (int argc, char** argv) {

  LOG("Greetings StackOverflow! - from enthusiasticgeek\n");

  return 0;
}

For multiple files define these macros in a separate header file including the same in each c/cc/cxx/cpp files. Please prefer inline functions or const identifiers (as the case demands) over macros wherever possible.