Benefits of declaring a function as “inline”?

Question

Every time I read about the \"inline\" declaration in C it is mentioned that it is only a hint to the compiler (i.e. it does not have to obey it). Is there any benefit to ad

Answer 1

Since it's only a hint to the compiler, the compiler is free to ignore it, and likely will. The compiler has a lot of relevant information you don't have, such as how much of a cache line a loop will take up, and can inline or not on a case-by-case basis.

It's just a hint, so using it is unlikely to hurt anything. You almost certainly should avoid any compiler-specific things that force functions to be inlined or not inlined.