Macro to replace nested for loops

Question

I found this macro #define TIMES(x) for(int i1=0;i1<x;i1++)very pratical to shorten the code text. But I do not know how to write such a macro when I have nested loops and even I do not know if it is possible. The idea is the following. Is it possible to write this code

for(int i1=0;i1<5;i1++)
    for(int i2=0;i2<3;i2++)
        for (int i3=0;i3<7;i3++)
        /* many nested `for` loops */
{
    /* some code, for example to print an array printf("%d \n",a[i1][i2][i3]) */
}

as

TIMES(5) TIMES(3) TIMES(7) ....
{
    /* some code, for example to print an array printf("%d \n",a[i1][i2][i3]) */
}

with a sort of "recursive" macro that detects all TIMES and replaces them by a forloop with i1, i2, i3, ... i'n' loop counters ?

Answer 1

This is very bad practice, don't do this. Other C programmers are perfectly aware of for loops, but they are completely oblivious to your private, secret macro language. In addition, function-like macros like these have poor type safety and should only be used as the last resort.

The correct solution is not to use a macro, but a function. If you wish to utilize proper generic programming, you could write it as follows:

typedef void callback_t (int data);

void traverse (size_t n, int data[n], callback_t* callback)
{
  for(size_t i=0; i<n; i++)
  {
    callback(data[i]);
  }
}

Where callback is a function pointer provided by the caller, which contains the actual functionality. Similar to the loop body in your macro.

Full example:

#include <stdio.h>

typedef void callback_t (int data);

void traverse (size_t n, int data[n], callback_t* callback)
{
  for(size_t i=0; i<n; i++)
  {
    callback(data[i]);
  }
}


void print (int i)
{
  printf("%d ", i);
}

int main (void)
{
  int array [5] = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5};

  traverse(5, array, print);
}

---

EDIT:

In the above example, the data type was int. But since it is generic programming, you can do some tweaks and swap it for any other data type, such as an array or a struct. The catch then is that you must pass the parameter to the callback through a pointer, instead of passing it by value. Example:

#include <stdio.h>

/* Generally it is bad practice to hide arrays behind typedefs like this. 
   Here it just done for illustration of generic programming in C. */
typedef int data_t[3]; 

typedef void callback_t (data_t* data);

void traverse (size_t n, data_t data[n], callback_t* callback)
{
  for(size_t i=0; i<n; i++)
  {
    callback(&data[i]);
  }
}


void print_array (int(*array)[3])
{
  int* ptr = *array;
  printf("{%d %d %d}\n", ptr[0], ptr[1], ptr[2]);
}

int main (void)
{
  int array [2][3] = { {1, 2, 3}, {4, 5, 6} };

  traverse(2, array, print_array);
}