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Date: Sun, 22 Dec 2002 21:12:23 +0100
From: DervishD <raul@pleyades.net>
To: Joshua Stewart <joshua.stewart@comcast.net>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: A little explanation needed
Message-ID: <20021222201223.GC46@DervishD>
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    Hi Joshua :)

> In otherwords, what's the use of a do{X}while(0) "loop" instead of
> just X.  I'm not the world's best trained C programmer, so forgive
> me if I sound stupid.

    First, you do not sound stupid at all.

    Second. The do...while use in macros is to avoid the 'swallow
semicolon' effect ;)) In other words, it makes the entire macro
appear as a single statement. This avoids problems with 'else'
constructs with macros that expand to multiple statements.

    Someplace in the GNU cpp documentation you can find a far better
explanation of this effect and why the do...while helps (it makes the
macro a single statement...).

    Hope that helps :)
    Raśl