How to have macros expanded by doxygen, but not documented as a define?

Question

Say I have:

#define MY_MACRO(FOO) void FOO();

MY_MACRO(hi);
MY_MACRO(hey);
MY_MACRO(hello);

#undef MY_MACRO

I want the macros to be expanded by doxygen, which I am able to do by configuring it the right way:

ENABLE_PREPROCESSING   = YES
MACRO_EXPANSION        = YES
EXPAND_ONLY_PREDEF     = YES
EXPAND_AS_DEFINED      = MY_MACRO

This enables me to see the expanded result of the macros as documented APIs in the doxygen output (functions hi , hey , and hello ). That is all good so far. But the problem is that, doxygen also documents MY_MACRO as a define. However, I do not want the clients of the API to know about MY_MACRO , since it is undefed and is not usable by them, and should not be visible to them.

I have EXTRACT_ALL = YES in my doxygen configuration and I do not want to change that. I have tried the following configuration without success:

PREDEFINED      = DOXYGEN_SKIP_FOR_USERS

With the following code:

#ifndef DOXYGEN_SKIP_FOR_USERS
#define MY_MACRO(FOO) void FOO();
#endif /*DOXYGEN_SKIP_FOR_USERS*/

MY_MACRO(hi);
MY_MACRO(hey);
MY_MACRO(hello);

#undef MY_MACRO

This hides the documentation of the define, but of course prevents the expansion, so I do not get the functions documented in the generated API.

I would appreciate your help.

Answer 1

Supposing that MY_ is the prefix that you are using consistently in your code :) I would use the prefix MY__ (two underscores) for internal macros and then put something like

EXCLUDE_SYMBOLS        = MY__*

in the Doxygen configuration file.

Edit: the double underscore inside symbols is reserved for C++ (not for C). So if you want to be compatible with C and C++ you should choose some other type of convention. Unfortunately a leading underscore is reserved, too, so _MY_ wouldn't do neither.