Another trap with macros is that they might introduce extremely hard to detect bugs. You macro for clearing a bit like for example: #define CLEARBIT(a,p) = (

Another trap with macros is that they might introduce extremely hard to detect bugs. You macro for clearing a bit like for example: #define CLEARBIT(a,p) = ((a) &= ~(1 << (p))) might not work correctly if your datatype is something "exotic" like a long. An inlined function might be the better choice. Otherwise you would need to define specific macros again: #define CLEARBITLONG(a,p) = ((a) &= ~(1L << (p))) These bugs can steal hours of your time, especially on embedded systems where debugging is less accessible.