C Preprocessor Directives
C Preprocessor Directives
C Pre-processor directives instruct the pre-processor to modify the C program before compilation. A pre-processor is a program that modifies the C program before compilation. The preprocessor directive statements begin with the #.
Examples
Some of the examples of the C Preprocessor Directives are as follows:
#include
To use a C standard library, we must include the library header file in the code using the #include directive. For example, to include the stdio.h header file, we can use the following #include directive statement.
#include <stdio.h>
#define
The #define directive is used to instruct the preprocessor to replace the occurrences of the textual constant with the defined value. We can use this directive to define constants in the C program.
For example, to define the PI value we can use the following #define statement.
#define PI 3.14
Common Mistakes
To use the standard input and output library function in the C program we have to include the stdio.h header file. To avoid compilation warning messages like the one shown:
Unlike the programming statements, there is no need to terminate the preprocessor directive by a semicolon.
Example:
#include <stdio.h>;
If you terminate a preprocessor directive with a semicolon compiler will throw a warning message. Sample warning message
warning: extra tokens at end of #include directive #include <stdio.h>;
To resolve the warning message, remove the semicolon in the preprocessor directive.