C: macro produced warning "statement with no effect" - c

Question

I have following code in C:
int do_something(void);
#ifdef SOMETHING
#define DO_SOMETHING() do_something()
#else
#define DO_SOMETHING() 0
#endif
This code produced warning "statement with no effect" when compiled without SOMETHING defined. I am trying to fix it, but there is one problem - code which uses this macro sometimes checks that "return value" and sometimes ignores it. Because of this I cannot use the easiest solution - casting to void in macro itself.
Is it possible to write macro which allows to compare "returned value" and does not produce this warning when it is ignored?
I use gcc to compile my code.

Answer 1

Three possible solutions:
Define a do_nothing function, which will get optimized out by gcc:
int do_something(void);
int do_nothing(void) { return 0; }
#ifdef SOMETHING
#define DO_SOMETHING() do_something()
#else
#define DO_SOMETHING() do_nothing()
#endif
Or, modify the do_something implementation to move the #ifdef check there
int do_something(void)
{
#ifndef SOMETHING
return 0;
#endif
// Your implementation here
}
You can also ignore the warning using #pragma directives.
By the way, which version of gcc and with which flags are you compiling? gcc -Wall -pedantic with GCC 4.9 doesn't produce the warning.

Answer 2

#include <stdio.h>
int do_something(void);
#ifdef SOMETHING
#define DO_SOMETHING() do_something()
#define DO_SOMETHING_ASSIGN() do_something()
#else
#define DO_SOMETHING()
#define DO_SOMETHING_ASSIGN() 0
#endif
int do_something(void)
{
static int cnt=0;
/* code for do something here */
++cnt;
printf("do_something has been called %d %s!\n",cnt,
(cnt==1)?"time":"times");
return cnt;
}
void main(void)
{
int x;
DO_SOMETHING();
x=DO_SOMETHING_ASSIGN();
printf("%d %d\n",x,DO_SOMETHING_ASSIGN());
puts("end!!!");
}
I hope this is usefull to you!
If you save this code as main.c, you may compile it with:
gcc main.c -o main
when you run main, you obtain the following output:
0 0
end!!!
If you compile it with:
gcc main.c -DSOMETHING -o main
When you run main, you obtain the following output:
do_something has been called 1 time!
do_something has been called 2 times!
do_something has been called 3 times!
2 3
end!!!